


Wolfgirl

by swimmingfox



Series: Wolfgirl [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Implied Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Sandor plus Arya equals superbadass, Second Person forever, chicken, did someone say chicken, man I love chicken (etc), sansan, supersuperslowburn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-18 15:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 48,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1433221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingfox/pseuds/swimmingfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandor captures Arya as she runs away from the Brotherhood. They bicker. A lot. And encounter some other people along the road...</p><p>Hints of Sandor/Sansa, growing rather stronger, and a lot of Sandor and Arya bitchin'. Darkness and hilarity! Becomes QUITE AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all, this is something I started a while ago, just trying out different writing techniques and giving my favourite character a (platonic) whirl with my other favourite character! It's starts in rather HBO-y fashion,with lots of extra imagined scenes and dialogue, then veers off course... 
> 
> SanSan fans stay tuned!
> 
> All characters etc are GRRM's.

You’re running. The men are shouting behind you, shadowy voices getting louder, their torches flickering. Two of them on horseback. All you know is that you have to get away, away from those stupid men who’d sell you down the river, away, and home, home to your mother, your brother. 

A tree moves and suddenly your feet are no longer on the ground.

***

She’s whipping through the trees, can hear her coming a mile off, twigs breaking, her breath short and high. I grab her and slap my hand over her mouth, lift her so that her feet dangle at my thighs. She tries to bite me and I hold her still until the outlaws go past, and she’s kicking the hells out of me. Doesn’t know what’s bloody good for her.

Twice I set her down and she tries to make a dash for it but I’ve got a hold of her and think about bashing her skull in a bit. Instead I tie a rope around her so her arms are behind her, and then she stops struggling.

Bloody wolfgirl.

***

 _The Hound. The last on your list_.

You fight for dear life but it’s no good, he’s more than twice your size and his hand nearly covers your whole face. He stinks of wine, sharp and strong and horrible. You remember his burnt arm and try and grab it and he hisses and growls a bit, but doesn’t let go.

Yoren. Harrenhall. The Brotherhood. And now him. Running from them was stupid, you know that now. The Hound must have been stalking them for a day or two, waiting for his chance. His chance to steal you, take you back to the most evil place on earth, the place where everything stopped.

Your father’s unbelieving eyes, and the doves breaking up into the sky.

***

She’s the damned opposite of her sister and that’s the bloody truth. Size of a large rat, brown and grey and eyes hard as quarry granite - not those soft, watery things, flaming hair, promise of freckles. This one’s hair is cut like a boy’s, and she’s dressed as one too. Looks perfectly bloody used to it and all. 

She’s gone still for now on the horse as we weave through the trees, and I dump her on the ground in a clearing, prop her up against a dead trunk. She’s not crying as some girls would, just sitting looking at me like she’d happily slice my balls off. I make a half-arsed fire and pass her some salt beef, which she refuses. _Suit yourself_ , I say, and she looks away.

She’s not what you’d normally think of as treasure, my prize – to replace the money those fleabit outlaws stole from me as well as the flesh off my arm, which still hurts to fuck. Getting burnt again hurt my mind more than anything else, I swear it. Taking me back to being six bloody years old, screaming into the grate, my skin sizzling. Gods, thinking of it makes me puke. Or maybe that’s the wine.

***

‘Don’t think about running, girl,’ he says, after retching again, settling down on his back, his hands folded on his stomach. ‘Plenty more dangerous than me out there, if you don’t break your neck first.’

More dangerous than him. There was no one who was more of a killer, who didn’t look gleeful when he thrust his sword in the air. Though he’d looked as frightened as a pathetic little girl when the fire had flicked over his arm in that cave, fighting Ser Beric. You’d run at him, a dagger somehow in your hand, and Gendry had pulled you away, and the Hound had laughed at you. Laughed in your face as he rolled on the ground, putting the flames out.

 _He killed Mycah. He should have died_.

You dream of fire licking up men, the flames the shape of wolves, the men howling. You dream of blood, pools of it in underwater caves, in canyons. Blood-lakes. Blood-rivers.

And now dawn.

It’s easier than you think to twist out of the ropes he bound you with, though you chafe your wrist so much that it begins to bleed. Your hands are so cold that you hardly notice it, and you look at the redness unfeelingly. 

He’s asleep, head to one side, the fire just damp ashes. It’s drizzling, and silent. 

There’s a rock near your head. Light enough for you to lift, just about. You creep up, quiet as a cat, swift as river water, and walk over, all lightfoot, the rock in your hands.

 _He killed Mycah. He should have died_.

***

I’ve a knack of keeping one ear awake to the world when the rest of me’s under. Helps when you’re in battle, camping out, awaiting attacks at any moment. So I hear her boots on the leaf-mulch, padding closer, and I guess what she’s up to. 

_I’ll give you one try, girl_ , I say, opening my eyes, and she’s there above me, a big rock in her hands, blotting out the early sunlight. _Kill me, and you’re free_ , I say. _But if you don’t, I’ll break both your hands_. 

Her arms are trembling. She could easily cleft that into me, though it’s more like I’d block it, grab her, smash her into the mud. What prize would she be then, though. I watch her eyes widen as I speak, and she drops the rock into the ground by my leg, and walks away, back to her trunk.

She doesn’t realise I’m looking out for her, of a sort. Those fucking ragbags might have got her to her family in time, but they could have just as easily made use of her in other ways. I think of her sister, and her long neck, and how she had looked when I went to her after the battle. A mixture of fright and confusion, her nose curling at my wine-stink and fear-stink. I must have looked madder than a spooked horse. For a heartbeat, I’d thought she was actually going to say yes, and part of me had prayed for her to nod, while the other part prayed for her to refuse me. And when she did, I had turned tail and got the hells out of there, seeing the green terror of the wildfire, and the amber flames of her hair.

Might as well get one of them home.


	2. Chapter 2

His horse is huge, now that you look at it in daylight. Taller than him at the neck, black as your heart. He’s brushing him down, and you watch the tremors ripple on his legs, and imagine the Hound’s skull caved in, a mess of blood and bone.

He speaks without looking at you. ‘I can bind you up again and toss you over him like dead game, or you can sit up with me. Which is it going to be?’

‘Sit,’ you say, the first words you’ve spoken to him since he snatched you.

***

Sullen little bitch, this one. I lift her up onto Stranger, in front of the saddle, and she gives me a look so foul it could turn meat. I haul up behind her and raise my eyebrows at her. 

_What_ , she says, vicious. _You’ll have to hold onto me girl_ , I say, _or else Stranger’ll toss you under his feet on the first bump on the road_. 

She glares at me and sticks a hand around to the back of my mail and I’m thinking, I’m bloody glad you haven’t got a dagger stashed away and I’m thinking, wonder if your sister would look at me like that if she was sitting up here.

***

You hate him. More than anyone. Except Joffrey. And Cersei. And maybe the Mountain and his men. You’re holding onto the brother of the man who watched rats chew their way through men’s breastplates. Women’s breastplates. 

He’s crunching and gobbling on an apple right in your ear. It’s disgusting. He offers you half of it, like you’re a pet pony. You’d rather starve. He tells you that there are plenty worse than him, that he saved Sansa from men who would have raped and killed her. 

It gives you a pang to hear him say ‘your sister’. To think of them all, scattered to the four winds: Sansa east, Robb west, Bran and Rickon north, and Jon further north still. Part of you can hardly remember what it was like to be with them. To tumble about with Rickon and your wolves, to tease Bran for being a worse archer than you, to make Robb laugh hysterically at some folly you’d committed, and to Jon, for everything. For being the one person who understood that you wanted to be a knight, and for telling you that you could be. 

And Sansa. You miss her too. You hated her once, for her pathetic weak lies, for standing up for Joffrey, for everything she loved, the songs, the dancing, the stupid dresses – but that all seems a long time ago now. She’d paid for it, in her own way, losing Lady. You don’t know where Nymeria is now, but you know she’s alive at least. You’re sure of it. That’s what you all must do, all of your pack. Stay alive, keep your noses to that strong vein of red wolfblood running deep under the earth.

***

The Red Fork has a shine on it like new-forged steel. I turn Stranger to get a better look at it, and the crazy girl asks if it’s the Blackwater. She’s gone in the head – and a couple of hundred leagues out, too. I tell her where we’re headed. She doesn’t seem to have a clue about the Frey-Tully marriage. Makes me wonder if she knows about Winterfell. Her grip on my back loosens a little, then, and I hear the hope in her voice, faint, like a loose thread.

***

He stops to let the horse drink and gives you a strange look, like he’s trying out a kind expression for the first time, and it is itching. ‘Did you hear much on the road?’

‘About what?’ you say.

‘The war. What’s been happening around Westeros.’

‘I heard quite a lot at Harrenhall.’ You eye him carefully. He doesn’t seem to hold any love for his old employers. ‘I was Tywin Lannister’s cup-bearer for a while.’

His one proper eyebrow raises so far up his forehead you think it might make a break for it altogether. ‘Twyin Lannister had you as his cup-bearer?’

You shrug. ‘That’s what I said.’

He was looking into the stream, perplexed. ‘Why would he do that? Why didn’t he have you as a hostage? Bargain with you?’

‘He didn’t know who I was,’ you say, lightly. 

He snorts then and barks a laugh so hard that his horse jerks its great head up and looks back at him, whinnying. He pats him on the neck. ‘Tywin Lannister had you under his nose and never knew it? You’ve made more of a fool of him than anyone else ever will, then.’

‘Your brother was there, too.’

His face turns more surly, then. ‘Oh, ay.’ 

You don’t know what to say after that. The Hound has gone very quiet and dark, like he might chop everything he sees in half at any moment, so you sit quietly until it’s time to go.

He stands in front of you hesitantly. ‘I can’t get up there on my own,’ you say.

He shakes his head slightly, tossing it like his horse does. He opens his mouth and shuts it again. ‘Do you know about Winterfell?’

‘What about Winterfell?’

‘That it was taken. Sacked.’

You freeze. ‘You’re lying.’

He bites his nail. ‘Heard it more than once. Theon Greyjoy and his krakens.’

You almost laugh. The thought of Theon raiding Winterfell was ridiculous, like a child at play with a wooden sword. Theon was almost your brother. And then a thought strikes you. Your brothers. Your real brothers. You look at the Hound carefully. ‘Are my brothers hostages then?’

He looks like a rabbit in a trap, just for a tiny moment, and then pretends to look normal. ‘Probably.’ He doesn’t lie well. He picks you up as if you’re feathers and puts you on Stranger’s neck. 

You hold onto him and don’t say another word for the rest of the day.

***

She knows about her brothers. I didn’t tell her well, but she knows, in her heart. I can practically feel it, pumping with rage, dark as anything. She’s bloody mute until sundown. It’s not fair to keep it from her, though. 

We ride north and west, keeping to game paths, and I catch a hare. She just sits there like a lump whilst I strip it, get a fire up, cook it. I make her eat this time, stand over her until she chews, slowly, eyes full of hate and fire.

She whispers though, whether in her sleep or not I’m not sure. I hear a whisper, then a pause, then another whisper. Names maybe. I swear I hear mine in there. Or maybe it’s the wind.


	3. Chapter 3

You look at the Hound over the fire one evening. He’s chewing the thigh meat off a hare like a disgusting, wild dog. You will never, ever own a dog. Not now.

‘Why did you leave King’s Landing?’ you ask.

He stiffens, and heaves a big sigh. ‘Had enough.’

‘The Brotherhood said you left the battle of Blackwater because you turned craven.’

He leans towards you, a snarl twisting on his face. ‘You’ve seen me fight. Do you think I’m craven?’ You shrug, secretly happy to have riled him. ‘Fuck the Brotherhood. Fuck you,’ he says, and glugs his wine.

‘Why did you leave then?’

The fire jerks and parries in his eyes. ‘None of your concern. But if I hadn’t, you’d still be loping along with those outlaws in the wrong fucking direction, so be glad I bloody did.’

He mutters _craven_ , and _fuck_ several more times and throws bones into the flames.

***

Later, she asks how Sansa is and I almost choke to death on my bread hearing her name. 

_How should I know_ , I say, cool as I can. 

_Before you left, not now_ , she says. _Was she alright_? 

I chew slowly, trying to think how the hells to answer her. _Ay_ , I say, not looking at her. 

She digs at the ground with a nail. _Was she still – happy to be marrying Joffrey_? she says. 

I almost laugh. _Gods, girl, you’ve been gone a long while. She said she was, all the time, so much my bloody ear would fall off_. 

She grinds her fingers into the mud furiously, maybe like to start them bleeding. 

_Stop that_ , I say and look at her properly. _She’s as brave as you, in her own way_ , I say. _She might not be attacking men thrice her size with rocks but she’s had to play a game, too_. 

I sit back and forget she’s there for a bit, wondering what the hells has happened to the little bird. Stannis was beaten and Joffrey’s now betrothed to the Tyrell girl, news that gave me a wash of relief until I remembered that it didn’t mean she’d be set free, anything but. Just married off to some other fucker, if the boy doesn’t beat her to death first. 

I dream of pale, naked skin, bruising all over like blooms of violets.

***

Ahead, there is a long bridge, stretching for what looks like leagues across a stormy black and silver river. And by the bridge, a vast, two-tiered castle, and another at its other end.

The Twins. You stand looking at it, a blur in the mist and the smoke from a hundred campfires. A thousand. Campfires of men who fight for your brother. For you.

You’re almost there. Just another half day’s ride with this stinking idiot, and you’ll see your mother again. It doesn’t seem possible, that by nightfall her hands will have touched your face, your shoulders, that maybe she will have given you scolding looks for the clothes you’re wearing. You don’t care. You almost look forward to that. You’ll wear a bloody dress, if she tells you to. Maybe. For a bit.

The Hound stole a cart, stuffed his face full of sow’s ears. There are still bits of pig hair in his beard. He keeps belching in your ear, shoving you up tighter into him, as much as you try and wriggle. He is so disgusting he makes you want to throw up. He keeps telling you how much he’ll get for you, how he’ll go over the Narrow Sea, how he’ll become a sellsword, fight for any man’s coin. He has no valour. No code. Nothing, save his horrible face and filthy mouth. He is the opposite of Syrio Forel, of Jaqen H'ghar, of your father. He is the shittiest excuse for a knight-who-is-not-a-knight that you have ever met.

He belches again. You wonder if Robb will let you kill him straightaway, or whether you’ll have to sneak out again, stalk him, and ram a sword right through his bloody throat.

***

 _Stop it_ , she says, as we come down the slope towards the walls. 

I bring her up to me some more. The girl is wriggling like a bloody virgin. _If you don’t want Stranger’s hoof in your belly, just hold bloody still_ , I say. _Fuck’s sake_.

 _You’re doing it on purpose_ , she says and turns round, gives me a look as good as two asps just let out of a basket.

I snort. _You must be fucking joking_ , I say. _I want rid of you just as much as you want rid of me. Moreso. I want your stupid little cunt as much as I want Joffrey’s finger up my arse_.

She jabs an elbow back into me, forgetting there’s armour there, and clutches it, scowls. Can’t help grinning. And wondering how much the Stark cow will give me for her. What I’ll ask for. How much coin is enough? To keep me, get me over the water, onto land where people might not know my face, where I can just keep my head down, try out some foreign whores maybe, start fresh, whatever in the hells that means. 

Or maybe they’ll just take her and chop off my fucking head. But I’ve one small thing to bargain for, at least. A small gilded thing I can deliver, if they let me leave with my balls intact. News of their other daughter. The one I should have taken, first time around.

***

Your heart is beating in your throat as you near the walls, which are the height of three men.

Your mother. Robb. Your mother. You see wolves swimming in fish-thick rivers, and try not to pray. Try not to believe in the Gods. You don’t need them for this.

***

Hold up. You can hear them now. Voices, of men out here, singing the same old songs they ever sing, songs about war and death and cunts. The night’s come crawling in as we’ve neared the gates, and we’ve got through the first portcullis with one look at these pigheads and not much of a look at me. The girl’s crouched down amongst them, and I’m praying for her not to do anything too fucking stupid.

As we get closer, there are tents, everywhere. Banners – wolves, the Twins, fish, more. Men staggering around, flagons spitting beer. They don’t look like much of a fucking army right now, that’s for sure. 

What’s strange though, is what you can’t hear. You can’t hear anything from inside the castle, the sounds you’d normally hear, trumpets and drinkers and dancing and - 

***

Something’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. The shouts from behind you, the sound of metal clashing, and men, running into the castle, their swords out. 

A scuffle, a howl. Amber eyes behind wooden slats. _Grey Wind_. 

***

As soon as I see the first sword gleam, I know. I know that this game is up, that this wedding is going to be nothing more than a bath brimming with blood, that the fish are going to be gutted, filleted, the wolves snared, full of arrows. 

The fucking girl. I look round and she’s not there. A feeling like a fist in my stomach. I untie Stranger from the cart, stick my sword in a couple of bellies, try to find her. If she goes in there, she’ll be as a dead as the rest of them.

***

Grey Wind’s there. Your wolf-brother, just behind that door. There’s a pull in your blood, like a tiny tide. You are the waves and Grey Wind is the moon. You stand up, and a group of guards push past, stand in front of the wooden door. There’s a deathly hush, like all the world’s sound has suddenly been sucked dry. A click of crossbows. A whimper. 

It is the wolf’s, or it is yours.

***

It’s chaos, the mouth of hell, but I can cope with it, as long as there’s no fucking green fire. I kill a man, find an axe in my hand. It’s my world, this, arrows sizzling past my ears, swords softening flesh, the grunts, better than a woman’s. But it’s not her world. It shouldn’t be hers.

Into a courtyard, and she’s there, half-running towards some stable door, and I grab her. Her face is queer, fear mixed with confusion mixed with excitement, almost. 

_My mother_ – she says. Your mother has probably been cut in two by now, I think. _It’s too late_ , I say, and she begins to run. 

I hit her over the head with the axe handle and put her over my shoulder. 

Swords soften flesh, arrows sizzle.

***

‘Stop shaking, girl.’

Your breath is coming out in little stabbing thrusts and parries. Your limbs, your torso are trembling violently, worse than summer storms. Your mind has gone black, black as night, and bleeding.

Robb. Grey Wind. The banner.

You’ll never stop shaking.

***

Gods. In all the seven hells, I wouldn’t wish what she saw on anyone. Don’t quite believe it myself. The direwolf jammed on her brother’s shoulders, jaw hanging open like it was laughing. The Freys were laughing, and fire was everywhere.

She won’t stop bloody shaking. Can’t sleep with her jerking around all over the damned place. Don’t know to say to her, not now. My plan’s shredded to bits – where in the hells do I take her now? Winterfell’s a ruin. And now her family truly is and all.

It means Sansa’s the Stark heir. She’s in worse trouble than ever. I run through the people I can think might try and marry her – a Tyrell, a Baratheon bastard if there are any left, a Martell, another Lannister. Gods.

 _Seven hells girl, will you stop it_? I say. _B-burn in h-hell_ , she says. She’s as dark as they come, and she’s not going to get any less so now. I do the thing I never thought I’d do for anyone, not since my little sister.

I roll over and scoot her into me a bit. She fights, kicks the fuck out of my shins, scratches at my face, but I grab her just the same and hold on tight. _Burn in hell_ , she says again and I say _I already have_ , and suddenly it’s like her blood and guts have drained out of her, quick as anything, and she stops dead, and her head’s in my chest. 

And she begins to cry.


	4. Chapter 4

You wake to a dull, thick pain on the back of your skull, like someone is pressing their thumbs in. The ends of your fingers and toes are numb. Your cheek is caked in mud, and your eyes are raw. And then you remember and your guts pull themselves apart.

The Twins. Grey Wind. Robb.

There’s a quiet, crunching sound. The Hound is kicking dirt over the fire. You want Jon. Sansa. Gendry. _Hot Pie_. If you saw Hot Pie right now, you’d hug him so hard you’d leave marks like fingers in dough.

For a moment you thought the Hound was going to do something very bad to you last night, smother you – or _worse_ – for not being able to stop shaking, but he just put his arm around you. And you’d let him, because right then he was the only person you had. You think you went to sleep crying, curled up next to him.

Maybe he is trying to leave quietly now, though. You’re not any use to him, not anymore. You lie very still and watch him through half-lidded eyes, which you shut tightly when he comes near.

A creak of leather. ‘Girl.’

Don’t kill me. You open your eyes slowly. 

He’s squatting down next to you, a look that’s angrily tired, and thoughtful, too. ‘Where can you go?’

You look past him to the trees, which point in every direction possible. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Think,’ he says, a bit more menacingly.

You try. Sansa is in King’s Landing, probably, and neither of you can go back there. Winterfell is a ruin. All of your brothers are dead, apart from Jon. ‘Castle Black,’ you say.

He spits and laughs at the same time. ‘I’m not taking you to the fucking Wall.’

‘Just leave me then. You can’t ransom me. Not now.’ You rest your cheek on the mud, press harder. 

He chews his cheek and sighs. ‘Don’t tempt me, girl.’

You roll over onto your back. Your stomach burns in grief.

‘There must be some Northern highborns I can take you to. Think. Who knows you? Knows your face?’

You think back to feasts and gatherings at Winterfell’s Great Hall, and the host of bearded men swearing fealty to your father. Greatjons. Umbers. Karstarks. Manderleys. But who would recognise you now?

‘Lady Smallwood,’ you say, thinking of the dress with acorns that she had made you wear. Even as you say it, you know you don’t want to end up there.

‘Never heard of her. Where is she?’

‘I don’t know. Acorn Hall.’ 

He looks blank. Puts a hand on his chin, leaves mud on his beard. ‘Your aunt,’ he says. ‘In the Vale.’

‘I don’t know her.’

‘That’s where we’ll go,’ he says, ignoring you, standing up, looking more angry and tired than ever. There’s blood all over his breeches that wasn’t there before. He kicks your ankle. ‘I’m not fucking carrying you. Up.’

***

She’s like a leadball and chain. We ride, and I’m cursing myself for doing what I did as much as I'm glad about it. 

Who the fuck cares if she lives or dies? She’s just a bloody Stark, and she’s got as much future as a man with no cock. 

Neither of us are saying anything. There’s just the sound of twigs underfoot, the ravens answering them, their throats cracking apart up in the trees.

Her aunt had better pay me. The girl is family and that means something to highborns, otherwise there wouldn’t be so much bloody fighting. No idea how much I’ll get now but it’s about the only thing I have to hang onto. I need something. Something to get me over the water. 

***

Days and days go by. Your bottom hurts something rotten from sitting on the Hound’s horrible horse, and your stomach has shrunk to the size of a walnut. You’re always hungry, and he is too. His hunger mixes up with his anger, makes him worse than ever.

There’s a camp of Freys, talking. You hear ‘wolf’ and ‘head’ and ‘bitch’ and you jump off the horse, not caring about the nearness of his hooves. Half of you is in the trees, in the leaves, watching your other half as it pretends to be lost, drops a coin, stabs the first man behind the ear. Bloodbloodblood. Out of his neck, out of his mouth, bubbling like wine. 

The other men are dead before you know it, the Hound breathing heavily, holding his elbow, looking furious. There’s a loud buzzing in your ears as you look down at the man you killed. The first proper man. You feel nothing.

***

She doesn’t say a damned word for days, just sits, limp as a doll. The only time she does speak is when we come on a camp of Freys, and before I know it she’s jabbing a knife – my knife – in a man’s neck and I have to jump in and slay them all before they gut her. One of them puts my elbow out a bit, little shit, before I slice him in half.

And afterwards, she goes back to being mute, even as I try and get some food down her, looking the opposite of bloody grateful, looking at me like she wished I’d just let them have her.

Maybe I should have, and just been done with it. Makes me almost want to be back at the king’s tourney, fighting my brother, winning all that money. That was easier than carrying this dark little wolfbitch with me.

***

He makes you brush the horse down, and you do it too hard and it kicks out at you, gets your leg. It bleeds and the Hound wraps leaves around it and a rag and you think about kicking him in the face, just like Stranger, and making a run for it. But you don’t. Where would you go? You don’t want to go to your Aunt Lysa’s. You don’t know her, not one bit. 

You don’t know anyone. Anyone but him.

You are hollow, a whittled-out twig. You are nothing.

***

She’s looking at me as I make the fire, legs crossed at the ankle, picking at a twig like it’s Joffrey, like it’s Cersei, like it’s everyone on that bloody list she whispers each and every night like a maegi’s spell. 

The flames come up and I jerk back a bit. Gods, I hate it. I’ll always hate it. The thing that can keep us alive is the thing that will kill me, I’m sure of it, one of these days.

 _I know why you don’t like fire_ , she says.

 _Well, that’s not exactly a fucking mystery, is it girl_? I say, knowing my burnt side is in the firelight.

 _No, but I know how you got it_ , she says.

 _Good for you_ , I say, but my mind’s racing. How can she know? No one knows.

 _Your brother did it_ , she says, and I feel sick. _He caught you playing with his little toy and he slammed your face in the fire._ It’s the first thing she’s said in days and she says it like she’s giving someone directions, like she couldn’t care less.

 _Who the fuck told you that_? I say, trying to sound bored.

She peels the bark off the twig, vicious as a Bolton. _Littlefinger_ , she says. _He said so at the king’s tourney, just before you fought the Mountain. He was telling Sansa like it was a nice little bedtime story, whispering in her ear, but I heard it all. I think he wanted his hands down her smallclothes more than anything else _.__

__My stomach turns into a boiling pit then, even though I try to ignore that last bit. That slick cunt. How the fuck even he knew – and he told – _her_. __

I get up, stand over her. She puts the twig in her mouth, picks her teeth with it, squints up at me. _Well, lucky fucking you_ , I say. _That make you feel good, knowing that? A nice story to tell all your friends_? 

_I didn’t have anyone to tell_ , she says, cool as anything. _I don’t like stories anyway_.

I bend down to her. _You going to tell anyone now_? I say, my voice dug deep into the mud.

She doesn’t blink. _I don’t have anyone to tell, do I_? she says. _There’s no one. I don’t know anyone_. And she turns around, lies down, shuts her eyes, chewing on the twig. 

I lie there, the fire snapping like a dragon is right in front of my face. Littlecock. His mouth at Sansa’s ear. And all those times she was looking at my face, looking like she was going to cry at any moment, and I took it for fear and it would make me rage and bite at her. Maybe it was fear. Or maybe it was something else. 

That night, with Blackwater afire. I don’t know what was heavier in me, the wine or my own fear. Both mixed together. I’d had plenty of wine in me before when I’d seen her floating down the corridors, holding herself high as she could. But never fear before this. The two together, they made me – into something desperate. Her room had smelt of lavender and lemons and sweet girlsweat, and she came running in, and she was holding her doll as I tried to hold back my anger at her own fear, tried to tell her I’d take her with me, away from this place that was making her lose all her colour. 

I should have taken her with me anyway. Wouldn’t be stuck with this little pain in my arse then. Or I should never have gone in there. Or I should have stayed. 

I don’t sleep. 

__***_ _

__You don’t understand why he is helping you. He keeps saying that it is for the ransom, but to get it he has to take you all this way, feed two mouths instead of one. Ragged pigeon, mangy rabbits, a pheasant, once. If he didn’t have you with him, he could go faster, live on less food._ _

__The land is ravaged. As if someone huge has run their fingers through it, gathered things up, thrown them down again. Houses are ruins, often still smoking. Once you both sleep in a barn and he kills three rats for you both to eat. He eats the tails and everything._ _

__You wonder what is over the Narrow Sea. The Hound doesn’t really know, though he says that they all have greasy hair and smell like fish._ _

__You tell him he doesn’t smell any better, and he stops at a river._ _

__‘What?’ you say._ _

__‘In.’_ _

__The surface is choked with big green leaves, the water between them brown. Algae. ‘No.’_ _

__‘You think _I_ smell bad, girl? Go on. We don’t pass a bloody river every day.’ He prods you in the back until you lose your balance and slide off the horse._ _

__You look up at him. He’s folding his arms, looking faintly amused. ‘I don’t want you looking at me,’ you say._ _

__He laughs, loudly, and dismounts. ‘I don’t want me looking at you either. You’re a scrawny little boy and I don’t give two shits what you look like. Get undressed and go in before I throw you in.’_ _

__You stand near a bush and remove your clothes. Some of them are crusted and unyielding. You have lived in them for weeks. Months. You steal a glance at the Hound. He is standing looking at the sky. You follow his gaze – an eagle? A raven? – until you realise he’s doing it on purpose, not looking._ _

__You run, jump. The water is freezing, silty. Your mind goes blank, a sheet of unmarked parchment. The sky is like a window pane with rain behind it. It’s muddy at the bottom of the river, as slippery as frogs on the soles of your feet, and you try not to squeak. But it is water, and when you come out you feel better. Just a bit. You realise that when you were in there, you didn’t think about Robb. About your mother. Bran and Rickon. Just about water._ _

__There’s a blanket on the ground by your clothes. The Hound is looking at the sky again._ _

__He goes in too, doesn’t care a bit that you’re right there, just stomps in. He’s covered in hair. He looks disgusting._ _

__You’d seen men of all shapes, all sizes, on the journey with Yoren, to the Knight’s Watch. No one knew you were a girl so they all just stripped off to wash at the streams, pissed in front of you. You heard plenty of them tugging on their cocks at night, too. The only one that didn’t do any of that in front of you was Gendry. When everyone washed, he’d disappear round a corner, come back rubbing his hair, and if you caught his eye he’d blush._ _

__You wonder where he is now._ _

__***_ _

Every time we pass a river now, she asks to stop. Not just rivers – pools, becks, streams that are not much more than a few gobfuls of spit. She jumps off and hangs her clothes on a tree and goes right in and stays there until I yell at her. Afterwards, each time, she’s less scrappy, doesn’t snip so much, just sits there on the horse shivering. Starting to talk more and all, asking questions, while she tilts her chin up to sky, scowling at it like she’s trying to frighten it into brightening up. _How old are you_ and _who taught you to use a sword_ and _why aren’t you married_ and _why didn’t you steal money from Joffrey before you left_ and _why can’t you catch more pigeons_. 

To which the answers are, _six and thirty. My father, then Tywin Lannister’s Master of Arms. Why do you fucking think. I’m not a thief. I don’t see you catching any fucking pigeons._

And to each answer there’s another question. And another. Makes me wish she’d kept her fucking trap shut after all. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set around the ‘chicken’ scene in Season 4 – I touch on it but have chosen to write around it, as we all know that bit probably pretty well...

More sennights of riding, and of darkness. Villages with their stomachs ripped out, people, the same. The Hound curses under his breath, all the time. Curses when Stranger – you think of the horse by his name now – slips in the mud, curses as you pass houses that smoulder and smoke, curses as he comes out of another abandoned farmstead empty-handed. You’ve learnt more curses with him than you did with the Knight’s Watch and the Brotherhood put together.

You’re moving through one village, collecting firewood, whilst he searches for clothes, for food, for anything. There’s the same smell in every place like this – something curdled and ancient. You feel like the only living thing apart from him for leagues and leagues, like the only living thing on the whole of Westeros. Everyone is dead.

It hits you again, harder than it has for a few days. They’re all dead. Your family, ghosts, less than ghosts, nothing but fronds of smoke on the wind, fronds that you can’t reach, that wreathe out of your grasp every time you try. Your legs go from under you.

***

Another place that stinks of death. The whole countryside’s turned to rot. You can’t always tell who’s been through here, but one thing’s certain as hells – it doesn’t matter what side it is, they’re all the bloody same. Lannisters, Starks, Freys, Boltons, they all do the same thing. Raze homes, rape women, kill everyone. 

Girl’s still not back with firewood. Gods damn her.

I find her sitting in a barn, nestled in amongst the old hay like a chicken and I’m about to clip her round the ear when I see how wet her face is. I push my breath to my gut, pack it down. I’m no good at this, wet nursing a girl. 

I sit down, a bit away from her, pick up a bit of straw.

***

You hate that he sees you crying. It makes you weak, a weak little girl on his hands. You turn your back to him, put the heels of your hands underneath your eyes.

He heaves a big breath. ‘I’ve nothing good to tell you, girl. Can’t say it gets better.’

How dare he even _think_ about understanding. ‘How do you know?’ 

There’s a long silence. A crow squawks, somewhere far off. ‘People die. It’s the way of it. We’ve all had it happen.’ 

He’s looking very hard at a piece of straw, like it might tell him his fortune. 

‘Who died?’ you say, quietly. 

‘My mother, when I was just a boy.’ He sighs and rubs his face. ‘Hardly old enough to remember. My father, maybe when I was your age. My sister. She was younger than you.’ He half-glances over, just for a second.

It’s as if your insides are a long valley, the wind whistling slowly down it. ‘So it’s just you and – your brother?’ you say.

‘Ay.’ Spoken as if accepting a curse on his life. 

‘You hate him, don’t you?’

He turns to you, slowly, the straw shifting against wood. ‘What do you bloody think?’ His words aren’t vicious, more – resigned.

You can’t imagine what it’s like to have a brother you hate. A brother who hurt you like that. You’d told the Hound about his face, just to see how he reacted, hoping to make him angry almost, hoping he’d hit you. He hadn’t hit you.

‘You’ve still a sister. And that boy up in the snow. It’s better than some.’ His words were blank, simple. No pity, but no anger either.

You try and picture Sansa’s face. It isn’t quite right, like it’s been rubbed at. Too smooth. Her eyes aren’t there, not properly. ‘What if she’s dead too?’

There’s a slight stiffening to the air, to his shoulders. ‘She won’t be.’

‘How do you know? You’re not there.’ You almost blame him for not being at King’s Landing for a second, just to be able to check on her.

His piece of straw flutters to the floor. There’s a pause, before he shakes his head, roughly, dog-like. ‘Better her alive and married to someone they can use. That’s how it is for women.’

‘They killed my mother.’

‘Your sister –‘ he stops, looks strangely into the middle of the barn, as if seeing a ghost. Maybe he’s thinking of his own sister. You watch the dust motes sparkle and wait for him to speak again. ‘They’ll marry her. Get babes in her. It’s their way of using your line. Making the Starks theirs.’ He turns to you. ‘They’d do the same for you if you were still there.’

‘No way in all the seven fucking hells.’ You’d cut their balls off. All of them.

He shoots a look at you, gives a rough-hewn grin, and gets up, picking your meagre pieces of firewood up into the crook of his elbow.

You get up, follow.

***

It all kicks off at the first inn we come to in days. She knows one of the men, somehow, and some cunting sword-with-a-name he’s got tucked into his belt, and before I know it we’re in there, and the room’s gone quiet, and you could slice the air with a knife. 

I feel it well enough. Know that the fight’s coming. Feel fucking hungry, tired, the beer I neck going straight to my head, but, looking at the one who thinks himself their leader as he sits opposite me, the one who thinks the girl’s my whore, who thinks I’d join them on their black rampage through the – fuck ‘em. 

***

The minute you see Needle, you know. You know that you are going to get it back. And you do.

***

Well, at least we fill our bellies for the first time in fucking days. The innkeep gives us all the roast chicken we want, even if we have torn his place in half. Chicken never tasted so good. I could eat it for fucking ever. The inkeep’s daughter looks at Arya with eyes big as moons. 

Arya. Suppose that is her name. The man she wanted, the one she killed with that little pin of hers, talked such shite I was sorry I didn’t get him myself.

We get her a horse and all. One of the mares the smallest soldier was riding. Which means at least I can ride ahead when she starts asking questions again.

***

You go to speak, then stop. It’s night and the fire is making the copse look like it is bending down towards you, hands cupped. You’re both on bedrolls.

‘What?’ he says, a dark, low sigh, the other side of the flames.

‘That thing you said.’

‘What thing?’ A trace of impatience.

‘To Polliver.’ You stare at the sky. ‘That you’ve had better.’ He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move. ‘You won’t do that, will you?’

A long silence. ‘No.’ Then he moves, loudly, a hand going to his head. ‘Gods, girl, what do you take me for?’ He sighs again, a long outbreath that feels like it reaches the tops of the branches, weaves through them, disappears.

‘So you haven’t done that?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘A man’s got to have a code?’

‘Ay.’ You hear him shake his head. 

You think of cracking the first man’s skull, and the feel of the sword softly going into his flesh. You’d felt the blade touch bone. ‘Will you teach me?’

Something like the growl you suppose a cave lion might make, low in his throat. ‘Teach you what?’

‘To fight. I’ve got Needle now.’

You hear him think about chiding you about your sword’s name again, and then stop. ‘You seem to be doing alright on your own.’ 

Polliver’s blood, guttering at his neck. His eyes, widening as he finally understood who you were. ‘I need to fight better. I had a teacher, at King’s Landing, but he was killed.’

‘That Braavosi lizard.’ His voice is full of scorn.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m not blind. Or deaf. Dancing masters don’t scrape steel on stone.’

‘Will you, then? Train me?’

‘Stop asking bloody questions. Go to sleep.’

***

I suppose I should train her. She did end two men at the inn, and one of them at least might have caused me trouble. I’d been kicked about like a bloody cabbage in a yard and was tiring just a bit. I’d heard her words, though, when she’d stood over the one she knew. She’s dark as fuck – there’s some proper oil-blood roaming through her veins. 

Before I go to sleep, I remember the name she said, of the one whose neck she sliced that damned little blade right through. One of the names she’s whispered, when she thinks I’m dead to the world. I understand what she’s up to now. She’s out for revenge. 

In the morn, she stands opposite me, looking just about ready to kill me, her little sewing needle pointing out. _Remember this is just training, girl, right_? I say. Her shoulders drop a little and she nods, I swear looking a bit disappointed.

She shows me her moves. I laugh my arse off. _You’re not going to be fighting shadows_ , I say. _You’re going to be fighting men, and they’ll be coming at you, hard_. 

She looks like she’d like to chew my ear off. _It’s what Syrio taught me_ , she says. _And look where that got him_ , I say back.

She runs at me and I knock her sword out of her fingers. She frowns, bites her lip, picks it up, comes again, and I do the same. She’s about as terrifying as a gnat.

 _Got to do better than that_ , I say. _You’re twice as big as me_ , she says. _I’m twice as big as two of you_ , I say and she scowls. 

_I hate you_ , she says. 

_Good_ , I say. _That’ll help when you’re trying to stab me to death_. Her eyes spark. I lean down to her. _Pretending to stab me to death_ , I say.

***

You do still think about killing him, all the time. He killed Mycah. But – he’s the only one. It eats you up inside to think it. And he shows you a thing or two, even if his sort of swordplay is like chopping down trees. It’s useful enough. Maybe it’s useful enough for the others on your list. 

Even him, one day.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve decided to write around most of the Hound/Arya HBO scenes for the next few chapters, but with just minor allusions to them… hold fast for new encounters!

We eat properly for the first time in ages, thank fuck. She turns on some sort of hidden, highborn charm I wouldn’t have dreamt she’d had and next thing I know a man’s taking us in and we’re shovelling rabbit stew that tastes about a thousand times better than any rabbit we’ve had down our throats. His daughter, size of a wren, sits opposite, looking like she might burst into tears at any minute. I have to talk to him like I give a fuck about what he’s saying, whilst Arya keeps shoving me and smiling her highborn smile.

No ale though. Cunt.

Girl keeps staring at me whilst he drones on. Maybe she won’t burst into tears but open her beak and spool out a song, loads of high notes, like a little - 

***

The Hound drinks his flagon in one long gulp, the lump in his throat working hard. It hits the table with a loud thwack and he sighs heavily at the same time. ‘More of that,’ he says to the wench that’s passing. 

She grunts and hitches her skirt around her hip a bit, fetches the wine, brings it back. ‘A thank you wouldn’t go amiss,’ she says out of the side of her mouth, not looking at him, though she doesn’t seem much cowed.

The Hound just eyes her as she tips the bottle’s contents into his glass, a look that might go either way, into a snarl or one of those horrible grins that makes his burns coil up like tree-knots. He makes a sudden, lurching move. The woman gives the slightest yelp and for a moment you worry, think that he’s trying to grab her, that not only is he a thief now but a rapist as well, before he prises the bottle from her fingers. ‘Might as well just take the lot.’

She huffs, loudly. ‘It costs, ser.’

‘No sers. You’ll get your coin.’ She sighs and leaves the bottle, gathering her shawl over her shoulders again. Her many layers seem to be slipping off her, and she walks with a heavy, rolling gait. ‘Probably,’ the Hound says under his breath, stealing a glance at you.

You just glare at him. You are still utterly furious. After you worked hard on being so polite, getting both of you a hot meal and a proper roof and a haybarn to sleep in, he hit the man over the head and stole his money. You had to run after him, past the little girl as she bent over her father, crying. For just one stupid, idiotic moment the night before, you’d thought that the Hound was being kind. Being _human_. 

‘Getting a taste for thieving now, aren’t you?’ you say. ‘First you steal a man’s silver and then you can’t even bring yourself to spend it?’

He pours more wine. ‘Shut up.’ 

The fire gives a loud snap. You think of Nymeria, clutting her jaws together after a yawn, and watch him as he tips his chin up again. A dark red drop lands on his beard and you want to smash his face in, make other drops. ‘I want some,’ you say instead.

He stops mid-gulp, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. There’s a recent scar on there, maybe from the inn with Polliver and his men, that you hadn’t noticed before. ‘Want some what?’ 

‘Wine.’

He breathes a laugh and snorts at the same time. ‘Can take your drink, can you?’

You’ve hardly ever drunk anything. Just some ale sometimes at breakfast on the Knight’s Watch march, though it smelt a lot like dog’s piss to you. Wine at least smells better, like really unripe blackberries. And you are so fed up. ‘Yes,’ you say.

Another near-silent laugh. ‘Why would I? Be less for me, then.’

‘You have to learn to share things.’

He turns to you, looking dangerous. ‘What, like pigeon? And rabbit? And fires? And beds? Fuck off.’ Fair enough. You shrug and stare at him. He shakes his head. ‘You’re too young. It’ll beat you.’

‘I’m too young to have lost my family and killed three men but I’ve still managed that.’

He sighs. ‘Go on, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ He grabs the wench again on her way over, demands another flagon, and pours you half a cup.

***

The girl getting drunk is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a bloody long time. She sinks the first one like it’s water, the second a bit slower, the third slower still. Belches, loudly, twice. Looks quite pleased.

 _Oh ay, delivered like a true princess_ , I say, folding my arms.

 _I’m not a princess_ , she says, her words slightly strung together. 

_A lady then_ , I say. _The Lady Arya Stark of Winterfell, a burnt ruin in the snow. You should be wearing dresses and tying your hair in bloody fancy circles and sewing poxy flowers onto handkerchiefs_.

She pushes me, clumsily, and I don’t shift an inch. _Shut up_ , she says. _I’m not a lady. I’m a –_

I lean over on my elbows, gaze at her. _Go on_ , I say. _This I’d like to hear. What are you? A knight? A sellsword? A boy-whore_?

Her eyes get a glaze on them, travel the room, come back. She sits up straight, very straight. _I’m me. Just me. Just Arya_.

Well, that’s fair enough, I think, but it’s more fun taking the piss, especially when her bones look like they’re slowly turning to liquid. _What kind of a fucking name is that, anyway_? I say, pouring her some more of the rat’s blood they call wine in this place. _Everybody says it differently. Ar-yah. Ar-ee-yah. Even your family said it different ways. If even your bloody father didn’t know how to_ – 

She shoves me again, even more pathetically than the last time. _Don’t say anything about my father_ , she says. _Your name’s shit, anyway. That’s why you changed it, because you preferred everyone to call you a dog than call you by your proper name_. And she lifts up her chin, puts her lips out, begins to howl a bit.

I grab her cheeks so that her lips are squashed even more and she looks like a little rodent. _Don’t be a fool_ , I say, more quietly. _If we’re lucky, not everyone knows who we are_.

The howl dies in her throat and I let her go. She sags back on the bench, picks at the wood a bit, eyes her flagon like it’s got spikes. Hiccups. 

_You drinking that, then_? I say. 

She won’t be beaten, I’ll give her that. She swallows, slides her arm over the table, curls her hand around it, slides it back, wood scraping against wood, and drinks.

***

You wake up curled in a corner on the floor with the chamber pot next to your head. It smells disgusting and you have a look. Oh Gods. Someone’s been sick in it.

You don’t remember anything. The tavern room, the drinking, watching the stairs rising from strange angle. The light is very loud, cornets and trumpets playing in your face.

A sound like teeth harrassing wood. The Hound, scratching his head, or his beard maybe. The rasping, over and over, makes you feel ill. Your stomach is a silage pit. 

‘Awake?’ he says. You can’t see him, but he must be lying up on the bed. 

If you say words, vomit might come out. You make a tiny hum, which hurts your head.

A little punctuated breath through his nose. He’s laughing at you. ‘I did bloody warn you, wolfgirl.’

You start shivering. Why are you in the corner, on the floorboards? You tuck your hands in your armpits. 

There’s a groan and he sits up. For once, he’s taken his armour off. It’s in a pile by the door. His legs swing over. Stockinged feet, coming closer, and then his face is there, very near you, grinning more than seems fair. 

Your teeth chatter together, loudly. 

His knees creak as he straightens, pulls the blanket off the bed, throws it over you. ‘Lightweight,’ he says, before crouching down again, and gaining a look you’ve not seen on his face before. Serious, but softer than normal, just a little. ‘Get you something?’ he says. ‘Water?’ There’s a tiny bit of bile in your throat. ‘Stew?’ The bile swirls. There’s a pause, and you see the grin come back, the burns twist up, and he delivers his final blow. ‘ _Wine_?’

You throw up, into the chamber pot, onto the blanket, into your hair. 

***

I try and get the girl up, tell her it’s too dangerous to stay in one place but she is as heavy as a millstone, heavier than when I carried her up here last night, hitched over my shoulder like a dead faun. The mess she’s in is my fault in part, so we stay, and my hand itches above my sword handle all day. Hells, it was worth it to see her face turn green, to see the moment she realised that the wine was going to give her a bigger fight than those men she’d slayed. In truth, it’s good to have a day not moving. Rest Stranger and the mare. Rest myself.

I eat well, promise the wench coin when we leave – maybe I’ll give it, maybe not – drink ale. Keep my ears open for news, any news, of Lannisters, Boltons, anyone else, but the only talk’s of crops failing and leaves turning, and I get so bored I go up and check on her again. She’s wrapped up like a wolfcub in the blankets on the bed, just her colourless hair sticking out. 

_Just checking you haven’t choked to death on your own tongue_ , I say. _Though that’d make a pretty picture_.

Her eyes slide to me. The green in her face’s been replaced with a grayish white, snow and grit. _I hate you_ , she says.

 _Ay, you keep saying that_ , I say and throw her a bread roll. She flinches. _Eat_ , I say. She doesn’t move. I go a bit closer. _Eat, girl. It’ll do you good. Believe me, I know_.

A scrawny hand slips out and she nibbles at it like a bird. _We need to move tomorrow_ , I say. She nods and looks at me, rat-grey eyes. I bring my eyebrows down, try and look serious. I can’t help myself. _So maybe just two flagons for you tonight, I reckon_ , I say.

There’s a stiff pause, before she sighs and drops the bread roll on the floor, and fumbles for the chamber pot again.

***

‘Girl.’

The room is musty. You can smell his disgusting wine-breath, mixed in with the faint stench of your vomit. ‘What?’

‘You were dreaming.’

Yes, you were. Your mother, and your father, holding hands, standing atop a tall castle wall, not Winterfell, which suddenly began to crumble beneath them. And wolves were at the bottom, tearing their clothes to shreds, and their limbs.

‘I can’t bloody sleep if you’re shouting in my ear,’ he says. 

He said he wasn’t going to sleep on the floor for anyone, and your hipbone was still aching from the hardness of the boards the previous night, so you share – though he shoves you over until you’re right at the edge. It feels different from all those nights in the woods, or in the barns. You’ve slept right next to men and boys, many times, but never on a proper bed. But you’re so exhausted from throwing up over and over again, watching the day’s light fade, that you lie, spent, drifting in and out of sleep.

Now you fold your arms across your chest, listening to him shift and grumble. ‘Speak for yourself.’

He sniffs. ‘What?’

‘You snore. Really loudly. And you talk.’ You can hear his teeth grind together. ‘You say my sister’s name.’

The grinding stops. ‘Liar,’ he says, very low.

You turn your head towards him, though you can’t see his eyes in the dark. ‘You do. You say ‘Sansa’. I’ve heard you say it loads.’ The silence is so charged you wait for it to explode. You feel a little like laughing. ‘You _like_ her.’

‘That’s enough.’ His voice has an edge to it, but you don’t care.

‘You’re always talking about her, too. In the daytime, I mean. Your sister this, your sister that. It’s like you can’t stop thinking about her.’

There's a growl very low down in his chest, like a dog at a gate if you're coming too close. ‘If you don’t want me to tear your tongue out and fry it for breakfast, you’d best stop talking right now.’

You turn your back to him and hold your sides. An image of the Hound leaning over Sansa with a bunch of pansies or something, and her blushing and running away. 

In truth, you might have heard him say her name once. Or it might have been his own name. Or something else entirely. 

But it’s the first time you’ve grinned in days. 

***

Damn her. She’s telling me I say the little bird’s name in my sleep. If I do, I wish I could bloody remember my dreams of her.

I can hear the wolfgirl’s face creasing. She’s fucking smiling. The gods damn her to the seven buggering hells.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having a lot of fun writing this! Hope you enjoy!


	7. Chapter 7

You don’t drink again. Just the thought of wine makes you ill. Still, you don’t quite forgive him for letting you get so drunk. Once he finds you water-dancing, not using his own moves, and teases you mercilessly. _Dead like all the rest of your friends_. He goes too far. You see black and the next thing you know you’ve done a cat-spin and Needle is in his belly – or rather, stuck in his armour. The look he gives you before you find yourself on the ground is so hateful and you remember who he is, who he can still be. 

He waits for you, has your horse ready as you slowly walk back to the camp, your chin bloody, your lip throbbing. You don’t look at him. You hate him and you are sorry all at once. 

‘Count yourself lucky, girl, that I’m feeling kind,’ he says, mounting Stranger. You never named your mare. There seemed no point. ‘If I killed every man who had a go at me with a sword, then - oh no, wait.’ He looks at you. ‘I did.’ And he rides off.

***

Little wolf-bitch. Seemed we’d reached a truce, of sorts, and then she goes and does that. Not thinking that I’m wearing fucking armour and that toothpick of hers would break before it got to my flesh, dumb little cunt. I hit her before I really think about it – well, she did bloody try and stab me - and she goes flying. Pure shock in her eyes, clean as mountain water. 

Truth is, it did fucking hurt. But not in the way that she thought.

***

Somehow, he doesn’t remind you of it. Instead, he makes you do everything for the next few days and more – the horses, firewood, unpacking and packing, waterskins. You don’t complain. And, as the sennights pass, he teaches you more. Fires. More swordplay. How to know the weather, to see rain coming, though it’s not always quick enough to find shelter. He seems to hate teaching you – he continues to insult you more than Syrio ever did, every curse under the sun, but he does it nonetheless. And you learn to take it, and not bite back.

He teaches you how to make wire traps that you leave overnight, small loops half-hidden in the middle of a trail where the leaves are already disturbed. Mostly they are empty but once you find a hare, trembling, pearls of blood on its leg, and you are proud. One morning he suddenly stamps at the ground, gets up, stamps again and you think he’s lost his mind until he picks up a grass snake, its head all bashed in. There’s hardly any meat on it, just shreds, but you eat it anyway. You eat anything. You eat the grubs you find under the leaves and they wriggle on your tongue. You eat the leaves, too. Wormy apples, long past ripe. You look at the stones underneath your mare’s hooves sometimes and wonder how they might taste.

Others are hungry, too, it seems. After finding a dying man in a village, one who says the same things over and over again slightly differently each time until the Hound puts his knife through his heart, you are attacked. Men who have come back to haunt you, though not for long. Those horrible fat monsters from the cart with Jaqen. Rorge. And Biter.

The Hound is furious afterwards, more than you’ve seen in a while, more than when you tried to stab him, spitting and wincing and slumping in his saddle a bit. You stop for the night in a long valley, the knobbled hills stretching for leagues around you, and he curses worse than ever. There’s blood all over his shirt, and the slope of his neck is jagged and wine-red. 

When you approach him with the torch, you think he might hit you again, he looks so vicious. But the anger crumbles away and you see what he is, what he can be, underneath. Just a little boy. Maybe everyone is a little boy, or a little girl, underneath everything. Even you.

You begin to help him with the stitches, but it looks bad, and you don’t really know how to do it. Teeth marks in the skin. A deep wound. You don’t want him to die. Not yet. 

You try again, speaking as gently as you can. ‘I’ve seen it done. Our maester did it on Jory, our captain of the guards, when a hog got him in the forest. A big gash on his leg. He just put a torch to it, for a heartbeat. Jory flinched a bit, but he said it didn’t hurt. And his leg got back to normal.’ The skin of his leg had reddened and he’d limped for a while, but you don’t say that. ‘Maester Luwin said Jory would have died otherwise. From the infection.’ 

The Hound doesn’t turn round. ‘Do it and I’ll scatter your limbs to the four winds,’ he says, quietly.

***

Fucking fire. Fire is the worst ghost of them all, a proper one, one you can see, haunting you in every room, in every hearth, in every camp we’ve had out here. It’s a ghost that brings the smell back every time I look at it – like hot, rotten straw, like death – and the sound. The sound that water makes at the bottom of a boiled, near-empty kettle. 

She has no idea. Why would she. Most she’s had is a few cuts and bruises. When you’ve looked the white of the seventh hell in the eye, you don’t want to bloody look at it again, not for anything. It’s like telling a woman who’s been raped that she just needs another little prod from a stranger’s cock, just a tiny one, and it’ll all be better. She tells me I’ve been burnt since, by the Brotherhood, and I say _well I didn’t ask for that, did I_? and tell her I’ll kill her if I hear another word about it.

The bite hurts to fuck, though. That peasant piece of shit. He was on me before I knew it, teeth in my flesh. Cunt. Breaking his neck was the kindest thing I could have done. 

I lie, the ghost goading me between us, telling me in amber snake-tongues that it’ll help me, heal me. Burn me.

***

‘Do it.’

You’re only half-awake. For a moment you think you imagined it. You shift a bit, to test him.

‘Girl.’

‘What?’

‘Do it.’ The fire spits, low. The hills are low too, undulating waves, just a shade darker than the dark of the sky. ‘Go on, girl, before I lose my –‘

He doesn’t finish his sentence but you know what he was going to say. Nerve. You rub your eyes, scrunch your cheeks to wake yourself up, and rise quietly. You pick up a medium-sized branch from the fire. It’s hot, but you can hardly complain about that. You try and hold it with your shirt-cuff.

He sits up, shrugging the blanket over his arms. The stitches had been abandoned – neither of you could do it right. His hair is hanging down in front of his face and he tilts his head, the wound exposed, matted.

The torch is both the light and the cure. You’re frightened, frightened of hurting him, of doing it wrong, but you mustn’t let it show. You carefully move the material of his shirt, and the stray strands of hair that are stuck to his skin, out of the way.

He’s gripping his fingers in his other hand, thumb dug into a knuckle. His shoulder is utterly tense, as hard as a boulder. He doesn’t seem to be breathing. Nor do you. 

‘Do it,’ he says, a hiss that’s quieter than he’s ever spoken, and very quickly you lower the torch, the flames touching his skin, move it across in a deft motion, over the whole wound, then throw the torch away. It goes out. Your hand is scorched.

There’s a moment of utter stillness, before a long groan emanates from behind the Hound’s closed lips, as if pushed with great force through a tiny gap. He shudders, quickly, violently, and you can hear his breath come. Shallow and short. He puts his hand up to his face, on his old burns, and down again. 

‘Put that fire out,’ he says, not looking at you. His hand is shaking in his lap, though he tries to disguise it.

You stand, uncertain. ‘It’s – I’ve done it now. The torch is out.’

‘Put it _out_. All of it,’ he says again, the words blunt, but dangerous-feeling, as if they were meant to be shouted.

It’ll be cold, you think, but do as you’re told, stamping at the embers, shoving soil on top with your boot. The sky widens. Stars. I’ll never sleep, you think. You shiver. 

He lies down, turns over. 

*** 

It could have been worse. Hurt like a bastard and now stings, feels stretched as tanning leather. But it could have been worse. She didn’t let it last long. 

I half-dream, of my brother, as he is now, and me small, a boy with milk teeth left over, and him holding me by my feet, over a carpet of thorns, over a sea of swords, over a pit of fire. 

There’s a sound, and I think for a heartbeat it’s an animal and fumble for my sword, but it’s not. The girl’s shivering a few feet away, more than when she was hungover. 

I stare up at the sky. _Sleep here if you need to_ , I say. 

There’s a silence and then a rustle and she’s there, next to me. Gradually, she shifts closer, still shivering like a mad thing. 

In the morning, I’m as cold as she was. She’s burrowed in her blanket, hibernation-shaped, except for one hand sticking out. The palm is red and there are small blisters in a diagonal line across it. And I realise why. 

The stick she used to burn me. It also burnt her. 

*** 

You stop at a river. You haven’t been in one for a while. The coldness has lost its lustre. The Hound sits by it, soaking his other shirt, holding it to his neck. 

‘How does it feel?’ you ask. 

He looks like he might say a lot of things. ‘A better fire than some.’ 

You go over, have a look. The skin is tousled, angry, red. You hope that it worked. That it doesn’t go black and his neck rot and his head fall off. He uses his teeth to tear some strips from the shirt and you help him wrap some river-soaked ones around his neck and bare shoulder. It drips all down him. 

He suddenly grabs your wrist in a way that makes you go stiff, try and pull away, though he doesn’t let you. Maybe he’s decided to punish you after all, for doing it. For burning him. But he just kneels there, his grip pinching, frowning at you, his head level with your chest. 

The river bucks and turns behind you both. 

His fingers loosen a little. ‘Bathe your hand, if you’re not going in.’ He turns your wrist to the sky and nods at the blisters that have stung horribly all night and all morning, before looking back up at you. 

You nod, go to the riverbank and shove your arm in the freezing water, before he calls you back and wraps your hand up with the rest of his shirt, more carefully than he’s done anything else in a while. 

It’s as close to a thank you as you’ll ever get. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you'll see, I've aged Arya up - older than the books, probably as old as she's supposed to be in the show, or thereabouts.

The hills are getting higher, rearing into dragons’ backs, scaled and glistening. The weather’s colder, too, and it’s harder to find food. You both snap at each other constantly but sleep closer than ever, share blankets. You have to.

You lift your head up from next to his shoulder. ‘Can I ask you something?’

He inhales, slowly and heavily, and doesn’t answer. Maybe he’d been asleep. Then he shifts. ‘You’ll ask it of me whether I want you to or not. Get on with it.’

‘Who was the first man you killed?’

The wind seems to want to answer for him, gusting through the reedy branches over your head. He doesn’t answer for ages. A sniff. ‘Young knight. When King’s Landing was sacked.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘How do you think? Sword. In the back.’

Like Jaime Lannister, you think, except he killed a king that way. Jaime was only young when he did that, Sansa’s age. ‘How old were you?’ you ask.

‘How old are you?’

You’ve had a nameday at some point since you’ve been with him. You’re not sure when. ‘Three and ten.’

Another silence. ‘Younger than you.’

You feel a faint thread of competitiveness. ‘The Frey man,’ you say. ‘He wasn’t the first. I killed someone at King’s Landing too. Before my father –‘ you can’t say it. ‘When I escaped. A boy. With Needle.’

He folds his hands on his stomach under the blanket. ‘Did you.’ Not a question.

You can see him again, the slum boy just a whisker taller than you, his bony elbows and sneering face. A slick of dirt across his nose. His cat-eyes widening as the point of your sword went in for the first time, softer than you dreamed. 

It’s so cold. You rub your feet together. ‘How do you feel?’

A sigh. ‘Fucking cold. Tired. Fed up of hearing your stupid voice.’

You persist. ‘I mean afterwards. After killing someone.’

Most of the blankets slide off you as he moves. ‘Killing’s no different from eating, or fucking, or anything else.’ He sounds irritable. ‘It depends. On what you’re eating. Who you’re fucking. Who you’re killing. Sometimes you kill a man because you have to. Because otherwise they’ll kill you. Sometimes you kill them because you’re commanded to. You enjoy those less.’

You know he’s thinking the same as you. About Mycah. And probably about others, lots of them. You’re sure he must be lying. That he relished it, chasing him down, your innocent friend, who fought you with wooden swords, gave you bones and ragged cuts of meat for Nymeria, taught you a few mild curses. You try not to think about it, as it makes you want to move away from the Hound, and then you’ll freeze. 

You carefully pull a blanket back over you. ‘The first one. How did you feel then?’

He scratches his beard, slowly. ‘Fear. Pride.’ His head shifts on his saddle. ‘You?’

That feeling comes again, the one that comes every time you’ve used your sword, or his knife, every time you have watched it plunge into pale skin or clothing like the fin of a shark coursing through water. 

‘Nothing,’ you say. ‘I felt nothing.’ 

***

In the morning, she sits bolt upright, takes the blankets with her. I pull them back, tell her to get the fuck up or lie the fuck down, just leave me the fucking blankets. 

_Joffrey’s dead_ , she says, like she’s just remembered. 

_Ay_ , I say. _Want to go to his funeral_? Hadn’t thought about it much myself, having been passed the news at the same time as being given the worst fucking lovebite in history. 

She just looks at me. _What will happen now_? she says.

 _The world will go on pissing and shitting and killing each other_ , I say.

 _But who will be king_? she says.

I sigh, sit up and all, rub my face. That’s my sleep done right there. _Well, work it out_ , I say. _Who’s next in line_?

Her head goes up, following a pigeon. _Tommen_ , she says, watching it.

Ay. I think on it, as we gather our things up, kill the camp. He was a good lad, the smallest one, the opposite of just about everything in the Lannister family. Maybe Cersei fucked a nice simple peasant boy to get that one, I think, though I know that’s not true. But it’s a joke and a half to say that he’s the king. They might put him on the throne of spikes now and then, get him to wear a pretty crown, but we all know who’s really going to be in charge. The right royal bitch, and if not her, then her father. The old lion, sitting in a dark corner, watching his prey through slitted eyes.

Might have thought I’d feel more for the boy I tailed since he was a grub. But I don’t – maybe being called dog does that to a man. There was something behind his eyes I could never stomach. I’d say that they were cold, dead, but – no. It was the opposite. The glee at living whilst he did his best to make everyone else around him into a rotting corpse.

She doesn’t say anything else, just brushing her mare down, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same as I. About the little bird, and what it means for her there now. It can only be better for her now that that shit’s choked on his own guts, but – hells, she’s still there. Maybe it makes no difference. Maybe there’ll be someone else there torturing her soon enough.

***

Thanks the gods for another inn. Your arse hurts, your nose is constantly running, and you haven’t eaten for the most part of a day. You don’t care if the Hound gets drunk – at least he doesn’t snap at you so much. He keeps putting his hand to his neck, and you’ve had a look once or twice. When you’ve told him that it doesn’t look infected – no black spread, as you’ve seen on so many limbs and torsos, mostly of dead people – he nods, curtly, and is nicer. For a bit.

***

Starting to go a bit mad only having her for company. It’s good to see other faces, none of them a threat, even they’re all as ugly as fuck. A wench, youngish, looks like she might take coin for something other than wine. Her hair’s straw-gold, a flash of red in it maybe. I watch her backside as she moves about the room, and when she moves to the corner of the room near the stairs, I rise. 

Arya looks up from her corner. _Sit tight_ , I say. _Don’t do anything stupid_.

***

Gross. He’s talked that girl into - letting him - _have_ her. Why in the seven bloody hells would she want to, even for all the coin in Westeros? He doesn’t hardly have any money anyway. 

You don’t really get it at all. It’s a weakness. Men become pathetic and angry and scary all at once, an itch they have to have scratched or they’ll go mad. It’s all the men on the long tramp north ever talked about, the Brotherhood too, long stupid stories that always had the same punchline.

The way they talk of it, it just sounds like a way of hurting a woman without leaving a mark. But you know that some women like it too – you wouldn’t believe it if you’d only ever heard the men talking, but there’d been gossipy maids at King’s Landing, girls at the odd inn. It was embarrassing, seeing women act so dumb for a man. You would never do that. Ever.

Even kissing seems a bit disgusting. Sucking on a man’s lip. Gross. Though you remembered Gendry looking at your mouth more than once, and feeling your cheeks go red and having to stomp off, furiously.

***

The girl’s a squealer. Better than being mute I suppose, but it unnerves me more than it should. I turn her over a few ways, her skirts getting caught, tell her to shut up, push hard. It’s alright. I feel calmer afterwards. Been too long.

I sort myself out, head downstairs.

Arya has her head propped on her hand. _You’re a disgusting pig_ , she says.

 _Jealous_? I say, pouring some ale, waving it under her nose.

 _Fuck off_ , she says. Can’t say I don’t know where she’s got that kind of talk from. She shakes her head, makes a few noises like she might throw up. Don’t think she means the ale.

 _Give over, girl_ , I say. _It’s none of your fucking business. Grow up_.

 _I don’t want to grow up_ , she says. _Not if_ that’s _what I have to do_.

 _Ay, well, you will, one day_ , I say, _and you know it. You’ll marry and whelp, and there’s only one bloody way to do that, whether you like it or not_.

She looks mad as hells. _I’m never ever doing that_ , she says, asp-like. 

I just laugh. _Maybe you’ll be in luck_ , I say. _Maybe no one will ever want to. Most boys are prettier than you_. 

She scowls and looks ready to bite my ear off. _We all know how pretty you want_ your _girls to be_ , she says.

 _Who doesn’t_? I say, shrugging. _But all cunt’s the same at the end of the day_.

She narrows her eyes at me and looks over at the wench, who’s just come back downstairs, not giving me a second glance, waving to some filthy peasant in the corner. _She’s not quite right, but she_ does _have a bit of red in her hair_ , she says, sounding as sly as a dog. 

Little bitch. I tell her three ways I could kill her right now, each worse than the last, and she just grins.

***

You’re out in the open again. The hills are mountains now, and make you think of the Hound’s jaw, the bones almost showing. You’re up, and practising swordplay, your own way, though you work in some of the Hound’s moves. He’s taking a shit behind a rock. Groaning. 

Movement, something stirring in the cleft of two hills. 

You stand on tiptoes. ‘People coming,’ you say. 

***

She whispers a warning and I finish up, come out. Two horses. Man and a woman – shouldn’t be too much of a threat. We stand, both of our hands on our sword hilts as they come nearer. 

The man’s armoured, that’s clear now. The woman has a hood up. They dip down into a valley and Arya shifts, nervous. _I don’t like it_ , she says. 

_Nor do I_ , I say, _but it’s two against two, and that's if you count the woman_. I glance at her. _And you have a sword_.

They’re out of the dell. A white horse and a larger brown one. And – there’s a little, knifing pain in my chest. A flash of dark sungold under the hood. 

It can’t be.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so here I veer. Tee hee. Due to an extra perspective, I’m now naming POVs. It won’t always chop and change so rapidly! Just this chapter, I reckon.
> 
> Putting this up quickly for BlackForestt!

**Arya**

She lifts the hood off and your heart stops. Her face is a pale moon, so much older than you remember, her eyes like jewels that need shining but as wide as anything. 

Neither of you speak. You will probably never speak again.

Her hands clutch the reins of her mare. ‘ _Arya_?’ she says, so slowly and quietly it disappears on the wind.

You want to turn and run. 

You do turn and run.

**The Hound**

The fuck – 

**Jaime**

Well, this is interesting. The junior Stark girl – more boy than girl to be fair, and unrecognisable from her days as a King’s Landing brat – and Clegane. Not exactly the first outlaw pairing that comes to mind.

But then I suppose an amber-haired princess and a handless ex-kingsguard aren’t exactly the stuff that stories are made of either.

Clegane draws his sword, puts a face on like a cave lion from a children’s book.

‘No need for that, now,’ I say, sliding off my horse. ‘We’re all –‘ I almost say _friends_. ‘Civility is quite underrated these days. I say we try and revive it.’

‘Fucking explain yourself,’ he says to me in a voice that’s as ragged as a Fleabottom skirt, staring up at Lady Sansa, puzzled and furious-looking. His sword remains drawn.

Sansa looks down at him from her mare. There’s something strange between them – I can’t quite put my finger on it, a quickening in the air. Frosty, careful. ‘Please would you find my sister,’ she says to him, in a voice that’s been getting stronger since we left the capital.

His jaw hardens and he keeps staring up at her as her horse shifts, restless, before he nods and stalks away.

**Arya**

It can’t be. It can’t be. You crouch down behind a rock, have to piss, partly out of fear, out of - something. You try and throw up, but nothing comes out. 

The Hound finds you. ‘ _Now_ you decide to scarper?’ he says, standing over you.

You can’t move. You bring your legs up, hug them. 

He squats, looks at the ground, clasps his hands together.

‘It can’t be her.' Your face is buried your knees.

‘Well, unless someone’s scraped her face off her skull and is wearing it like a mummer’s mask, it seems it bloody is.’ His voice is toneless.

She had looked horrified. She had taken all of you in, the clothes, the hair, the sword, and had looked horrified. And – you’ve only just realised, his hair is shorter, and he looks older too – she’s with _Jaime Lannister_. Kingslayer. Murderer of your father, or near enough. 

‘Why is she with _him_?’ you say, no more than a whisper.

‘No fucking idea.’ His voice is low. ‘But it’s probably best we go find out.’

‘I want to kill him,’ you say, though he was never on your list. 

‘Maybe I’ll let you.’

You sit, completely still, listening to your heart thumping. 

His knees crack as he stands up. 

You stand up.

**The Hound**

The girl’s reaction is not what I’d expected, that’s sure as hells. I thought family was everything to these people. But I think I understand, too, some of it at least. It’s just been so bloody long.

Long enough even for me, and I stayed at King’s Landing way after Arya. She’s –the little bir – she’s changed. Thinner. Taller. More of her shine gone, it seems.

The fuck knows what’s going on. Why she’s – why _he’s_ – my first thoughts are the worst and I try and banish them, try and think of a better explanation. I can’t think of anything. 

Jaime Fucking Lannister.

**Arya**

When you get back to the camp, she is standing by her horse, holding the reins. It’s a beautiful dappled-white mare, long lashes, shining hair. Of course it is. It’s _hers_.

She looks uncertain and her eyes have a rind on them like dew. She opens her mouth to speak, but doesn’t.

You don’t know how to feel. You feel like you’ve done so many times. Hollow. 

You sheath your sword, cross your arms.

**Jaime**

I’m used to awkward family reunions, but it’s becoming a little uncomfortable, even for me.

Clegane and I look over the girls’ heads at each other. He looks even worse than I remember, those burns melting off his face, the expression glowering and hangdog. He was always a good sparring partner, though, I warrant him that. He catches sight of my hand – my lack of hand – and I see something that is almost sympathy, just for a moment, before his face goes back to anger, and defensiveness, and something else I can’t quite place.

‘I suggest we give the ladies time to themselves, Clegane,’ I say.

His face is perfect granite, but he nods and steps away. I follow.

Out of earshot of them, he turns suddenly, leans very close. ‘What in the fuck are you doing with her?’

The formal introduction, then. ‘It’s good to see you too after so long. The last I heard you’d taken off during the battle of Blackwater. You abandoned your king.’ Joffrey is dead, I think again, and a small bell tolls in my stomach, cold, golden.

His lip curls. Not the prettiest sight. ‘Last I heard you had a hand.’

I smile. It’s hardly as if I haven’t heard that a hundred times. ‘A low blow, but you were never the most loquacious sort. And anyway, I might ask the same of you. I have to say, I never thought of you as a childminder.’

‘Wouldn’t have taken you for a traitor, which is what you must be if you’ve taken her.’ His voice lowers further. ‘If you’ve touched –‘

‘What, me?’ I say. ‘No, not my sport. Though I’m really quite moved by your gallantry.’ I turn his head back to the Stark girls, who are still standing far apart, staring at each other. ‘No, I really still don’t quite get it. What _are_ you doing with Arya Stark? Fancied a pet wolf as your travelling companion?’

Clegane spits on the ground. ‘Wolves don’t make good pets. You haven’t explained yourself, either.’

Honesty seems like the best thing. ‘I swore an oath. To their mother, to return them, upon her setting me free. It took me rather a while to get back to King’s Landing, only to find that one had been gone for a long time – presumed very, very dead. And taking Lady Sansa honestly was not a possibility. We were heading to the Twins before we heard –‘ I cast a serious glance at him. ‘I mean, you _do_ know -‘ 

His shoulders drop a little, the guard dog act slipping. ‘Ay.’ 

The Red Wedding, the bards are calling it. I don’t feel pity – being kept in a cage will do that to a man - but I never celebrated it. Death never feels like a great deal to celebrate. Not when babes are being stabbed in the womb, gates being shut on them. Distasteful. 

‘I would have thought that they might have been a little happier to see each other,’ I say, nodding at the Stark girls.

Clegane frowns, tosses his head. The angry guard dog returns. ‘That girl’s seen more shit in the last year than anyone,’ he says. ‘Give her a fucking break.’ And he walks slowly back over.

**The Hound**

Well, I never expected things to go this way, that’s for fucking sure. Two Stark girls in the same glance, as different as they could ever be. The little bird sits straight in her saddle, behind Lannister’s horse. Wolfgirl’s next, and still hasn’t spoken, not since she came back with me from behind that rock. I’m at the back of the pack, the last man. And we’re all going in the same direction.

Lannister had the same idea as me. We’re all headed for the Vale, it seems.

**Arya**

‘Arya. Please talk to me. I know it’s hard.’ You look up, unbelieving. How could she know _anything_. 

She is sitting next to you at the campfire that Jaime Lannister has made. The Hound doesn’t help. He’s probably glad as anything not to have to make one again. 

Your sister’s legs are folded carefully next to her, perfectly, though she seems used to sitting in the mud. You have your elbows jammed on your knees, your head propped up. It’s as heavy as anything. For the first time in ages, you think of drinking wine.

Her gaze is steady. You look away. ‘I _do_ know,’ she says, softly. 

You both look at the fire. Her sigh is graceful. ‘We have a lot to find out about each other,’ she says, carefully, like she’s walking on stepping stones over a furious river. ‘We – don’t have to rush. But –‘ You slide your eyes over again. Her voice drops, not more than a whisper, and she casts her eyes over the flames, to where the Hound sits, alone, drinking Jaime Lannister’s wine. The Kingslayer is taking a piss somewhere. ‘Why are you with him?’

Her voice is gentle but the disapproval is there, you swear it, the tiny emphasis on the last word. You turn, look away from her. You don’t really know what the answer is, anyway. 

You feel sick, horrible. Why should she understand? You don’t really. But you can’t just – go back. 

‘None of your fucking business,’ you say, and get up, take your blanket over to the Hound, knowing her eyes are on your back. He raises his eyebrows at you slightly, but doesn’t say anything, lets you settle next to him. You lie, listening to the slosh of the wine in its skin.

You don’t sleep until the light begins to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d be really keen to know if you think the third perspective is ok... I’ve decided to not have Sansa’s POV at all, for something different for me at least, as I’ve done that a lot. Kisses!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timings and logistics of previous well-known events are a bit ‘creative’, with apologies… Sansa is 17 in this fic. Arya is 13.

**The Hound**

In the morning, they’re up before us. He’s already come back with a bird tucked into the crook of his elbow, like it’s the easiest fucking thing in the world. Jaw like a damned bookshelf. The real bird, the tall one, taller than I remember, more copper than I remember, with the damned sun shining all of autumn into that hair, is brushing Lannister’s horse down like she’s his bloody squire. The two of them, sleeping almost as near each other as me and her, but gold and copper. Better than grey and – grey.

Of course she went with him. The pretty one. She probably begged him. Gave him a good – fuck’s sake.

Wolfgirl’s not moving. I nudge her with my knee. They’re showing us up. _Girl_ , I say. _Time to move_. 

She rolls over, mumbles something. _What_? I say. _I don’t want to go to the Vale_ , she says, dead quiet. Her eyes are like two dull bits of coal. _I want to go with you_ , she says, or I think she says, as her sleeve’s stuffed in her mouth.

I don’t know what to feel, then. _Don’t be daft, girl_ , I say. _Too many people know this_ – I stick a finger into my cheek. _More than they know you. There’s no safety with me. Not in the long run_.

She’s not saying anything, just lying there. _You’ve got family now_ , I say.

 _Like you and your brother_? she says, sharpish, and I feel an anger slap into me, grab her by the shoulder. She just stares, corpse eyes. 

_Listen, you little shit_ , I say. _You even think about comparing him – what the fuck’s she done to you_? I put on a child-voice. _Oh, she lied and you lost your little dog_. Then I remember what happened after that. The other wolf slain, the butcher’s boy. I let her shoulder go, look at the ground. _Just – think, for gods’ sake_ , I say. _You’re stronger together. It’ll be better_. 

I get up, head for Stranger, before she can think about killing me some more.

**Jamie**

It’s a curious procession. Clegane’s in front today, on that ridiculous destrier, which is just as dark-hearted and tetchy as he is. Lady Arya is next; clearly remaining in the company of a miserable bastard hasn’t given her any manners, though she does intrigue me. A girl with a sword. She makes me think of another, though she’s a third of her size. Sansa rides next to me when she can, but always looks ahead, at her sister’s back. She says very little, less than she’s said for a while. 

It took a good few days for her to speak to me properly after we got away. I told her a dozen times that her honour was safe with me, but she took some convincing. Inns weren’t always forthcoming and even if they had been, I felt a little too close to home until we got further north, and I’d got a better – which is to say, _worse_ – set of armour to disguise myself with. The hand’s a problem, though. Name one other person with a golden hand in Westeros. Sometimes I take it off, let the rag-covered stump show, and people think I’m even less harmful than I am. 

The hand. When I dream, I always have two hands. Sometimes I wake up and in the fog of sleep swear it’s there, and flex my fingers, one by one, thankful that it’s all just been the worst sort of nightmare. Before memory comes back into my bones and the hand’s gone again. 

Miraculously, we’ve had little trouble. Cersei must be after us, or must have sent word. Imagining her wrath has become a somewhat unhealthy past-time, but I can’t quite picture her somehow. As if her face has been rubbed at with a brassing cloth. We were ambushed early on by raiders wearing lions on their sleeves, but managed to lose them over a river, just. 

Since then our journey’s been a long and erratic one, going over old paths, through rivers, retracing. And Sansa has never once complained. There’s a lot of that Tully mother in her, as much as I hate to say it. A straight back, a grit that isn’t easy to pinpoint when you first look. She saw my frustrations with my hand almost immediately and found ways to make it easier – fires, cooking, helping me dismount even – without making me feel a crippled fool, her way quiet but insistent.

The fires made her talk, eventually, and when I heard her speak of Joffrey and everything he’d done to her – I could feel every organ in me shrinking in shame. If she knows I sired him she’s been very discreet about it. I could never say much after that. It just – made me more determined than ever to get her home, to the mother that imprisoned me. 

And then we heard about the Red Wedding.

**Arya**

‘Stop looking at me,’ you say.

The horses need resting and you’re sitting far from everyone. Every time you look up, her eyes are on you, bright blue, unwavering. Now her shoulders drop and she shakes her head. 

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ you say.

‘You don’t.’

You sit up, stare back. ‘You’re thinking that I look horrible. That I look like a disgusting boy in these dirty clothes and that I should be wearing a dress and that my hair should be down past my shoulders and you hate that I’m carrying a sword. You want me to be another bloody princess like you.’

Sansa puts down the bird she’s plucking. That had taken you by surprise, her picking out each feather so easily, like she was a kitchenmaid. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she says. Her voice is tight, but graceful, walking on a thin rope. ‘I thought everyone was dead. My whole family. When I saw you on the hilltop, I thought you were a ghost. That I’d finally gone mad. _That’s_ why I’m looking at you. Because I don’t believe you’re real.’

You can’t help it. The argument has started now. ‘Why did you let him take you? A _Lannister_.’ 

There’s a sudden fury in her eyes, flashing and dark, the heart of fire. Something you’ve never seen in her before. She stands up and the pheasant flops violently to the ground. ‘What do you think it was like me for me there? Do you think I was looked after? That I slept on a bed of rose petals and ate lemon cakes all day long? I was frightened every moment of every day.’

She sounds pathetic. She lived in a castle. With a bed. You raise one eyebrow, fold your arms.

There’s a dark teardrop at the corner of her eye and she looks utterly dangerous, like she’s sculpted ice and any second she’ll break, erupt into a torrential, jagged waterfall. ‘Ask _him_.’ Her eyes lift past you, over your head. 

You look round and the Hound is at his horse, his face turning at Sansa’s raised voice. 

‘Ask _him_ what they did to me. What Joffrey did. He _beat_ me. He stripped me half-naked in front of the whole court and had his guards beat me. His guards beat me all the time. With their fists. With the flat of their swords. He told me every day –‘ she takes half a step towards you, and looks ready to grab you, or maybe even punch you, and then lowers her hand, clenching it tight. ‘He told me all the things he would do to me, all the things he had been trying out on – other women –‘ her voice lowers a little, before finding its strength again – ‘women who were half- _dead_ afterwards, who had to be carried off, bleeding, not able to walk -’ 

Her anger is almost beautiful. She looks like a statue, a harpy, spreading her arms over the gates of some foreign city, to put terror into the hearts of travellers. ‘It got worse after he left –‘ she looks up again, towards the Hound, whose eyebrows furrow in surprise, before she focuses on you again. ‘How dare you. How dare you think that I would care about anything as stupid as what you’re wearing.’ She takes a final breath, and delivers her line, better than a perfectly-made girl-knight’s’s sword. ‘ _He made me look at Father’s head on a spike_.’ And she turns on her heel, and walks very quickly away.

Her hair is like a fox, supple, in the air, slipping through the trees. Two crows fly in front of the copse, as if sewing up gates, as if never letting you in. You feel like someone three times as big as the Mountain has just hit you. The Hound walks over, leaves crunching loudly underfoot.

‘Is it true?’ you say. ‘Did she have to look at –‘ You can’t finish. Bite on a fingernail, let it go.

He is looking into the woods, the way she went. ‘Ay,’ he says, very quietly. ‘Ay, she did.’

**The Hound**

Lannister comes back with her and I feel nothing but guilt. Guilt for not doing what should have been done all that time ago, guilt for every word I said to her, none of which were good, guilt for not taking her. 

It’s like she’s a wild horse and he’s got her eating cobnuts from his hand again, knows the ways to calm her. Arya’s sitting further away with her head resting on her knees, quiet. They’re a pair of bloody wild horses, both of them.

***

Later, when I’m ahead, taking a trail up a mountainside, her sister brings her mare up next to me, neither of them fazed by Stranger chucking his head up and down and rolling his eye. Her presence is like a great, white bird, high up, vast wings making shadows that cover half the mountains. 

I slow. _What_? I say.

She takes a breath, holds it. Doesn’t say anything. The dull purple of her dress – not too highborn-looking, which is good – makes her hair blaze more than ever. _Thank you for looking after my sister_ , she says.

First words she’s said to me, apart from when they first came up to that rock. I’ve caught her looking at me, like being stamped, branded, wax-sealed by her, my flesh congealing around the part of me she’s looked at, but it’s the first time she’s addressed me alone.

I stare straight ahead. Grey mountains, grey mud, grey stones. My colour. _Didn’t need much looking after_ , I say, glancing across. A tiny dent between her eyebrows. _She killed a man or two who might have caused me trouble_.

Her eyes widen and her head turns back to the girl, who’s a way behind and has just stopped her horse. She frowns. _Did you teach her that_? I don’t say anything. _I do remember what you said_ , she says, trying to get her mare to keep up. 

I rack my brains, trying to think what idiot thing of mine she means. All those times I’d snarl at her in some Red Keep corridor, trying to make her see truths, but only scaring her off.

 _Killing is the sweetest thing_ , she says, her words flat, not accusing.

That one I remember. Her with a rose-coloured cut near her eye, standing as straight as she could, after the riot. _She seemed to work that out just fine on her own_ , I say, and outride her.

**Jamie**

Lady Arya stops her mare, waits for me to catch up. For a moment I think she’s being kind but her stony look suggests otherwise.

‘Why did you take her?’

I ride on, allowing her room to ride abreast. ‘A debt to your mother. To return her daughter. Daughters. Which makes it all the more fortuitous to have found _you_. No one was sure that you were even alive. In fact, I sent someone else ahead to try and find that out.’

‘Who?’

I see her standing up in the bathhouse. Tall, broad as a damned oak, with those maddening eyes, like bread that’s just been baked. A hard crust, but floury. ‘Never mind.’ I nod ahead to Clegane. ‘You’ve been with him all this time?’ I might as well try and draw out her story while she’s next to me.

‘I was heading up to the Knight’s Watch first. We were captured. Then I was in Harrenhall. With your father.’

That stops me short. ‘With my father? As his prisoner?’

She shakes her head. ‘Cup-bearer. He didn’t know me.’ Her eyes flicker over to me very quickly, with a smugness I have to say I applaud. I’m still attempting to digest the near-impossibility of my father being such an imbecile as she continues, offhandedly. ‘I escaped. Then I was captured by the Brotherhood. Then him.’

I lean over and take the reins of her mare as gently as I can, using my thighs to stay upright in the saddle. Her look suggests that she knows a thing or two about that little sword she’s got tucked into her belt. ‘Lady Arya,’ I say. ‘You have my confidence. The Hound. Did he ever – has he ever done anything untoward?’

‘Depends what you mean.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’m not a lady. And no he hasn’t, _Kingslayer_.’ She tugs her reins out of my hand and I almost lose my balance. ‘Backstabber. Murderer.’

I can’t help sighing. ‘Yes, alright, get it out of your system.’ Her eyes are vicious. ‘If you’re not a lady, then perhaps I’m not who you think I am either.’

She leans over to me without effort. Her mastery of her horse is excellent. ‘I know that you captured my father. At King’s Landing. Had him stabbed in the leg. I know that that started everything. My father dying. Me having to run away. My brother. All my brothers. My mother.’ Her hand twitches over her sword handle as her other hand tightens on the reins, knuckles whitening.

I eye it. That would be perfect – pricked in the stomach by a girl half my size. A noble way to die. I look at her seriously. ‘You could, you know. Of course you could. You’ve every right. I know I can’t – you don’t have to forgive me. I’m just trying to do the right thing now. Understand?’

She stares at me, and I feel like I see her father, her mother, the Young Wolf, all three of them merged into one lupine gaze. Her hand moves to her lap and she canters ahead.

What she doesn’t know, of course, is that it started before all that. That it started in an abandoned tower in Winterfell, with her inquisitive, damnably nimble brother, and Cersei, soft and giving. But I’m not going to tell her that. Or Sansa. It’s all I can do to try and forget it myself.


	11. Chapter 11

**Arya**

‘Do you think he’s fucking her?’

The Hound bristles – you can practically see porcupine needles rise up on his neck. His eyes go to slate. ‘He says not.’

You’ve felt horrible all day. Not just the usual horrible – cold, hungry, your arse aching from your mare. There’s been a dull ache, like a worm carefully working its way through your insides. You know you have to talk to her. After what she said, the things that had happened. Joffrey. Father’s head. Yoren had grabbed you at the steps of Baelor’s Sept, jammed your head to his stomach, and you’d never seen it. When you think of Father’s death, you think of those doves cracking into the sky. But she saw it all. 

You’d got it wrong and now you’re avoiding her more than ever, following the Hound as he lays a wire trap, listening to him grumble about how they seem to have no trouble finding food, and staying warm. They don’t display great affection towards each other, but they definitely don’t argue like you two do.

‘And you believe him?’ you say. 

He puts his finger to his nostril, sniffs hard, and a long globule of snot shoots out. ‘Men like to boast about these things. If he was, he’d be telling me about it, most like.’ A branch splits underneath his boot as he crouches down. ‘Anyway, he likes blondes.’ He shoots you a look that you don’t understand.

You imagine catching someone on your list in the Hound’s trap. Twyin Lannister, Illyn Payne, Meryn Trant. An ankle, snared, a small trail of blood. _Each_ of their limbs trapped in separate ones so that they are spread-eagled on the ground, as people are on a rack, so that you can put your foot on their stomach and slice a line across their throat. 

‘Unlike you,’ you say, half in a dream.

His head jerks to you sharply and you snap out of it, and walk away very quickly before he can punch you.

Sansa’s squatting over the beginnings of a fire. She can pluck birds and brush down horses and make fires. Her hands are dirty and the bottom of her skirt is caked in mud. She is not the girl that you remember.

Her shoulders stiffen as you approach. Without turning round, she shifts onto her bottom, wrapping her cloak around her shoulders, gazing at the fire. 

She saw Father’s head, and you saw Robb and Grey Wind, merged together as one. You sit down next to her and take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ you say.

Sansa looks at you. ‘Start at the beginning,’ she says.

**The Hound**

They’re talking by the fire. Two Starks, two wolves, two faces both amber and shadow. Seems best to stay well clear.

Lannister has more wine. I take a good tug on it before handing it back. _How did you get her out of there_? I say. 

He takes a small sip, like a bloody girl. _I had help_ , he says. _My brother_.

Rage that embers quietly away in me every moment of every day sparks up on hearing mention of him, the fucking lowest of the low, literally. The man who made the thing that haunts me as much as my brother does. Green, licking up the walls of my skull at night.

 _Cunt_ , I say.

He lets that one slide over him. _Tyrion was as keen to get her safely out of Kings Landing as I was_ , he says. _My father had decreed that he should marry her_.

 _Who_? I say. He nods towards the fire, to Sansa, and I feel like throwing things, and like throwing up. _Her and the Imp_? I say. _You must be fucking joking. She’d have been better off marrying a monkey from Essos_.

He glances at me. _I know you’ve no love for my brother_ , he says, _but you should know – he’s the best of all of us_.

Can’t help snorting. _The best of the Lannisters_ , I say, as if I’m measuring flour, or grain. _A power-crazed bitch, a haggard old lion who’ll go on stabbing people in the back until someone cuts his balls off, a lying, whoring cross-eyed half-man, and a boy-king almost as mad as Aerys, maybe more. Ay, that’s high praise_. 

He sticks his chin down, not answering, and I feel a bit disappointed. Had hoped for a bit of a spar, at least. _Joffrey_ – he says, his voice drifting. _Joffrey was not Aerys_.

I turn to him, cross my arms. _Joffrey_ , I say, leaning down to him, _wanted nothing more than to torture that girl, both inside and out. He had whores delivered daily so he could put his crossbow in them, everywhere you can imagine, and worse. He had bards’ tongues cut out and shoved up their arses. Babes all over the city killed. And he was a cowardly fuck, as yellow as his bloody hair. Couldn’t piss straight the night of Blackwater_. I let my eyes flicker over Lannister’s hair and all.

He’s breathing, quietly. _I never meant_ – he says.

 _Your boy_ , I say, just as quietly, taking the wine back off him. _Your fault_.

Lannister looks as though he’s beginning to rise to it, just a bit. But his look catches on something, and his voice changes, soft. _There we are_ , he says.

I follow his eyes. The two of them, sitting close together. Wolfgirl’s head on her sister’s shoulder. Crying a bit – you can just hear it mixed in with the crack of the firewood. Sansa’s voice rising, becoming a wail. 

That’s family, I think, much as it pains me. 

***

Both of them look bloody awful in the morning though I reckon I’m not much one to talk. Red-eyed as albinos, shivering. Getting it out, I suppose. It’s not like Arya’s had much chance to. I’m no nursemaid. They slept close together and I hated that I missed the girl’s warmth.

I sit down next to her. _You haven’t killed him yet, then_ , I say.

She’s wiping her little pin with a bit of old leather, eyeing Lannister. Shrugs. _Maybe I’m biding my time_ , she says. Bit of a glint in there, aimed at me.

 _He’s only got one bloody hand_ , I say. _What are you waiting for_?

Her head jerks up to me. _Do you think I could_? she says. 

I sew my laugh up, don’t let her see it. _Like to see you try_ , I say. _Maybe I’ll put coin on it_.

For half a moment she looks excited, before her face drops. _You’re taking the piss_ , she says.

I shrug, lean back on my hands. _Just about knowing a man’s weakness_ , I say.

She looks back at him. _What do you think his is_?

 _Apart from the obvious_? I say, wiggling my fingers. _His sister, for one_. I spit next to my foot. She’s looking at me like a simpleton. _Did you never hear?_ I say. _He fucked his sister. Was fucking her for years. Couldn’t get enough of a golden cunt. And she couldn’t stop spitting out golden-haired children_.

She’s wide-eyed. Knew that would cheer her up. _That is disgusting_ , she says in one long, drawn-out breath, like they’re her dying words. She looks at Lannister again.

**Jamie**

‘Can I train with you?’

Lady Arya’s screwing her nose up at me, the nose of a little wolfpup. I can’t quite work her out, though clearly she’s had a dark time of it since she escaped from the capital. Working under my father’s nose being one example.

She’s found me alone, working on my swordplay, a pair of trees as my indomitable foes. I feel foolish, and like I’ve been spied on. ‘Of course,’ I say, lowering my sword in an attempt to look casual and turning my wrist. ‘Trying to get this hand as strong as my right once was is a patient game.’

‘I’m left-handed,’ she says. 

‘Good for you,’ I say. ‘Perhaps you can show me a thing or two.’

Her moves aren’t actually bad, though she lacks the strength to do any lasting damage to a man. And she’s just far too small. That said, Clegane has mentioned her tally. 

‘Impressive,’ I say as she wheels around me again in the Braavosi style. 

‘I don’t need your pity,’ she says, this time lunging at me in a very non-Braavosi style that suggests Clegane has had a say in this. ‘I need to be told. How to be better. And you were good, once.’

A back-handed compliment if ever there was one. I let it go.

‘Fight me properly,’ she says. ‘The Hound does, sort of.’

I can’t imagine that’s true. ‘If I were to fight you properly, I’m afraid you’d be looking at those canopies more than you’d be looking at me.’

‘Fine.’ No fear at all. It’s a little disturbing. She seems impervious to the idea of pain. ‘Come on, Kingslayer,’ she says. ‘Imagine I’m someone your sister likes.’

‘She doesn’t like many people.’

‘I don’t mean like that. Imagine I’m some young blonde squire who goes and visits her at night.’ She jabs her sword in front of me. ‘Tall and tanned and with a big cock. Maybe a cousin.’

I lift the hilt of my sword and crack it over her head without really thinking about it. She goes down in an instant.

Gods damn her. Cersei, I mean. She will have done that, with squires, with cousins, all that time I was a prisoner, maybe even before that. Certainly now. Her appetite is insatiable.

There’s a noise behind me and for a moment I think that the black destrier has chewed through its rope and has turned mad. I turn and instead Clegane is almost on me. 

‘The fuck are you doing?’ he says, as his fist meets my jaw. I stagger back. ‘Alright,’ I say, ‘my apologies. She just – hit a nerve.’

‘I’ll hit your fucking nerve,’ he says, and pulls his sword out.

‘Excellent,’ I hear Arya say under her breath from her position on the ground.


	12. Chapter 12

**Arya**

‘Are they going to kill each other?’ Sansa asks.

The Kingslayer and the Hound are circling each other in the centre of the copse, swords out. You crawled out of the way before they trampled on you, joining Sansa on a log. She is watching them nervously. They have already been fighting for five minutes, though most of it has been lunging and missing and goading each other.

‘Nah. They’re just getting it out of their system,’ you say, cradling your head, which feels like it’s a nest of writhing snakes. ‘Like fucking.’

Sansa is staring at you. ‘Arya, how do you know so much about – that?’

‘The Hound doesn’t really keep anything back. He likes you to know how the world is.’ She looks disappointed and understanding all at once. ‘I know you think he’s horrible, but he’s not so bad.’

Sansa sighs. ‘I don’t think that, not exactly.’ She wraps her arms tightly around her and winces as the Kingslayer ducks backwards, the Hound narrowly missing his neck. ‘He always looked out for me at King’s Landing. He wasn’t nice to me – in fact, he was mostly really mean, and rude, but he never beat me.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘What do you mean?’ She whispers. ‘Arya, has he hurt you?’

‘Tied me up. Bruised my arm. Punched me in the mouth. Hit me over the head with the handle of an axe and knocked me unconscious.’ Sansa looks utterly shocked. You grin. ‘It was the right thing to do.’

She still looks confused. 

The Hound’s snarling something about lion bitches. Jaime Lannister is saying something about lame dogs and fire, mostly from behind a tree.

Sansa turns to face you and speaks in a whisper that almost gets lost amongst the dialogue of blades. ‘He – he came for me. A long time ago. When Stannis invaded King’s Landing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Blackwater Bay was on fire, green wildfire that Lord Tyrion had organised – did you hear about that?’

You nod. The Hound had spoken of it more than once, usually with ‘cunt’ interjected between every word.

‘I found him sitting in my room. He was covered in blood and he looked frightening, really frightening, but also – frightened. And drunk.’

You try not to snort. No change there, then. In the copse, Jaime Lannister knocks the Hound’s sword out of his hand. The Hound pulls Jaime Lannister’s metal hand from his arm. You turn back to Sansa.

‘He said he would take me to Winterfell and keep me safe,’ she says.

You are really not in the least bit surprised, though pretend to be for her benefit, just a bit, make your face go wide. ‘What did you say?’

She eyes you carefully, sheepishly. ‘I said that Stannis would keep me safe. And he left me in my room and then Joffrey won.’

The Hound really should have got the Kingslayer by now. It’s a bit like they’re your champions, except they have only just been told and they’ve spent all day at an inn getting royally pissed on ale.

‘How do you feel about Joffrey?’ you say. ‘Now that he’s dead?’

Sansa gazes at the men, though doesn’t seem to be taking them in. ‘I feel nothing.’

‘Me neither. I wanted to. But I don’t. Ouch.’ Jaime wheels away, but not quite in time, and the Hound’s sword gets him just above his wrist. Jaime drops his own sword and raises his stumped arm up in surrender. ‘He has a fancy for you, you know,’ you say.

'He doesn't,' she says, quite calmly. 'I was worried about it, at first, but - he's been rather noble. And quite sad, I think. And after -' she glances at you, all colour fading from her cheeks. 'After Mother and Robb, I wanted to kill him. I tried to run away. But I knew it was stupid. Anyone could have taken me, hurt me. He found me, and he promised to see me safe. _Somewhere_. And I know he didn't do it. Have them killed. He was sorry for it. Even though they held him prisoner.'

There's the sound of steel clashing for a while. You feel a bit bad for teasing him about Cersei now. 'I didn't mean him.' Sansa looks at you. 'The Kingsl- Jaime. I wasn't talking about him.' You nod at the Hound, who's dodging a rather desperate headbutt.

Sansa’s jaw falls to the floor. ‘What? Arya, that’s _disgusting_.’

‘I’m just saying,’ you answer, nonchalant, gleeful at her horror. 

‘Why on earth would you say that? He hates me.’

‘If he hated you, he probably wouldn’t have come to take you away, would he? Anyway, he talks about you. All the time. About everything you did at King’s Landing, and everything you ate, and wore, and how he rescued you in the riot, and –‘

‘Well, he did rescue me in the –‘

‘And he says your name in his sleep.’

She goes pale. ‘Really?’

You nod, very definitely. You are having an excellent time. 

‘Fuck you,’ you hear the Hound say and look over again. He’s on his knees in the leaves, holding his arm. The Kingslayer’s holding his own sword again, arms up as if to say enough, and blood is dripping from his wrist as well.

**The Hound**

Piece of shit Lannister golden bollocks. I’m bloody out of practice, traipsing around with a little girl for company. Should have been training, properly, with men, not fucking rat-girls. I peel my shirt back off my arm, look at the wound. It’s not too bad, but it’s still a bloody wound.

 _They need sewing_ , Sansa says, standing over me, her shawl wrapped round her, and looking at Lannister too, who’s sitting on the log with his arm in the air. _I could do it_.

 _Don’t trouble yourself_ , I say, feeling bitter about just about everything. 

_She’s good at it_ , Arya says, picking at last night’s rabbit bone. Sansa glances over at her. _You were always good at embroidery_ , Arya says to her.

 _I’m not a fucking handkerchief_ , I say before I can help myself. Sansa’s eyes cloud a bit, like a river when the mud’s stirred up.

 _Don’t be an idiot_ , Arya says, and chucks the bone at me. It hits my beard and falls to the ground.

 _We should probably call a truce_ , says Lannister, watching the blood drip down his wrist. _I really must try very hard not to lose another hand_. 

Sansa returns with a needle – a proper one, not a bloody child’s sword – and thread. She sees to Lannister first, sitting next to him, graceful as anything, not saying a word. I see again the bond that they have, a sort of mutual understanding, a respect borne out of sadness.

 _My thanks_ , he says to her quietly when she’s done.

Then she comes over, kneels down in the dirt right next to me. She bids me stick my arm out, holds my wrist. Her fingers are like little pale sea creatures. Her thumb’s on the protruding bone. I think I stop breathing.

Her hand ghosts over my forearm, over the skin’s that twisted up slightly from the Brotherhood fight. _Were you burnt again_? she says.

Again. Of course, she knows about my face. Baelish. _Ay_ , I say. _People seem to like burning me_. I glance at Arya, making a point, and she rolls her eyes.

 _I’m sorry_ , Sansa says in a murmur and slides the needle into my skin.

It’s sweet pain, sweeter than it’s ever been. I watch it, mesmerised, and trying like hells to concentrate on it so as I don’t make an utter fool of myself by looking at her.

Arya’s pulling faces. I glare at her. _Pigeon need catching_ , I say.

Lannister rises. _You’re right. Come on_ , he says to her, let’s see if we can find some lunch. He looks at his stitched wrist, rueful. _You’re going to have to use the bow and arrow_. Her eyes light up. They go together, Arya walking backwards and raising her eyebrows, though thank the gods Sansa isn’t watching. 

She carries on stitching me up. Everything’s gone still. Leaves covered in thick wax. Birds all silent. _I should have gone with you_ , she says, very quietly, to my arm.

 _I’m glad you didn’t_ , I say, dead quick, and I feel her flinch. _Worked out best for you in the end, didn’t it? You got a proper knight instead_. 

Her needle rests against my skin, tiny, cold. I see a little pulse going in her neck. Gods, I wish I knew how to stop my bloody mouth sometimes. 

She takes a breath, and it’s as if the breath is liquid steel and straightens her spine into a sword. _I didn’t know_ , she says, looking at me, her chin held high. _I didn’t know how it could possibly become any worse. But it did. If I’d gone with you, we might have reached my mother. I might have seen her_ , she says, her voice mixing in with the breeze that’s come from nowhere.

She lifts the needle again. Fingers like dragonfly-wings. I listen to my blood ringing in my ears, something ticking in her throat. She finishes, the skin drawn tight, bringing her mouth down near my arm and biting the thread, a little scutting sound. Her lips so close, the sight of her teeth, almost makes me hard. Gods damn it. 

I look at her. Her Tully eyes are big and faraway and so sad it makes me want to crush her up to me. _If you’d have gone with me_ , I say, _and we’d reached your mother, you’d have ended up slaughtered alongside them. Or at best, married to a Frey. So I’m glad you didn’t_. 

I see a flush of pink bloom on her neck and her mouth drops open slightly, and I get up, walk off quickly before I blush even worse than her.

**Jamie**

‘I see it.’

Another day of hard riding, and we’ve moved properly into the Vale at last, though it will be another two days’ travelling until we reach the Eyrie. 

Clegane looks over, turning his head from where it had faced, over the fire, over at Sansa. He’d been looking at her for many more moments than was appropriate. ‘See what?’

The atmosphere's been strangely calm since our fight, if you can call it that. Neither of us wanted to kill each other, not really. What would be the point? If anything, it all feels rather better now. Less tense. 

‘I understand now,' I say. Why on earth you were traipsing round the middlelands with Lady Arya.’ Clegane narrows his eyes at me. I nod over the fire towards the girls, keeping my voice very low. ‘After the Frey massacre, you really could have cut her loose. She was no use to you, not with the family slaughtered. Yet you continued to feed her, keep her warm.’ I can’t help smiling, just a little. ‘You hoped in some way that if you helped Arya, her sister might think more favourably of you someday.’

‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what her sister –‘

‘Oh, but you do, Clegane. Don’t think I haven’t seen it. A halfwit would know it. You get a little lost puppy look in your eyes. When she was sewing you up. It’s really very endearing.’

‘Fuck you, Lannister.’

‘Yes, yes, fuck me, fuck the Queen, fuck the King, I know. Just –‘ I lean over, make sure my voice is lost in the crackling of the fire. ‘Just as long as you know that you’ve got as much chance of getting under that girl’s skirts as you have of sitting on the Iron Throne.’

Clegane rises noisily and stalks away, causing the girls to look up from where they sit closely together. They seem to be finding their way back to being sisters again.

I give them my best smile. ‘He’s a bit gloomy tonight, isn’t he?’

Less tense. Well, maybe for a short while.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, half-hearted apologies for all wayward logistics in this... Just a short one, but will get them up quickly I promise!

**Jaime**

We meet a man on the road, his cart full of vegetables. Never thought I’d be so excited to see carrots and turnips. They look like long-lost friends. I buy us a sackful, enquire about the Eyrie. The man, whose breath smells worse than hogswill, tells us rather unexpected news, and rather unwelcome at that. That Petyr Baelish is the new head of the household, having married Lysa Arryn. On my father’s command, no doubt.

We watch the cart disappear. ‘What do you think?’ I say to Clegane. 

‘I don’t like it,’ he says. ‘Man’s a devious bastard. Said one thing, did another.’

That’s truer than he knows. He courted Eddard Stark with one side of his face and plotted his downfall with the other. But he did have a soft heart for Catelyn Stark, and perhaps that would carry for her offspring too. Sansa’s auburn hair catches my eye. Or perhaps not. Perhaps all he’d want to do is replace Catelyn with a daughter. 

‘Lady Arryn is still the closest to family they have,’ I say.

‘Why don’t you ask _us_ what we want to do?’ says Sansa. ‘We’re the ones you’re trying to get to safety. Don’t we have any say?’

‘Of course, my lady,’ I say. ‘I’m forgetting my manners. I’d like your opinion very much.’

She looks towards the far hills, where the top of the Eyrie sits wreathed in clouds, and at Arya, who is scuffing her feet. 

Arya shrugs. ‘I don’t want to be stuck in some gloomy castle with him in charge. He’s creepy. He came to your father at Harrenhall, and made loads of promises, even though he was supposed to be Mother’s friend. He’ll probably just take us prisoner or send us back to King’s Landing.’

Sansa gives me that serious, beyond-her-years gaze. ‘I never trusted him. He promised to take me away –‘

‘What, him as well?’ says Arya, which I don’t quite understand. Clegane makes a noise somewhere between a cough and a growl and Sansa’s eyes flicker. 

‘He did,’ she says. ‘He promised me a boat, pointed it out to me, told me there was a cabin ready for me –‘ Clegane cough-growls again, more menacingly this time – ‘and then one day he’d just gone, disappeared, without a word.’ She glances at Clegane and her neck reddens. ‘I wasn’t going to go with him.’

‘He was a whoremonger, nothing more,’ Clegane says, biting off the feathered end of a carrot and spitting it an impressive distance. ‘If he’d had daughters he’d have whored their cunts out to fat old rich men, same as any of his other women.’

‘Perhaps not so frank in front of the ladies,’ I say. The man’s as coarse as sackcloth.

‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Arya says. ‘We’ve talked about all sorts of things. You don’t have to hide it.’

Clegane glares at her, a small muscle jumping in his jaw. 

‘I see,’ I say.

‘Whores are all different, depending on where you go,’ Arya says, as if a septa giving a lesson. ‘Littlefinger had the best ones in King’s Landing, where you could get anything you wanted. Boys, girls, old, young, light-skinned, dark-skinned, black-haired, red-haired, definitely red-haired, backwards, forwards, upside down, two together, three together, you watching, them watching, tying them up, being tied up. The ones in Fleabottom weren’t so fancy. Straight in, straight out, job done.’

‘ _Girl_ ,’ says Clegane at the same time as Sansa says, ‘ _Arya_.’ I have to say I’m rather enjoying it.

‘But I was always a bit confused,’ she says to Clegane, whilst beginning to juggle a turnip and a swede. ‘You said that it depends who you’re fucking - what it feels like, I mean.’ She catches the turnip in both hands. ‘But after that whore you fucked you said that all cunt’s the same.’

Sansa’s mouth falls open, and I swear there’s a delicate half-glance towards Clegane, who is looking like he’ll turn into a volcano at any moment.

‘What?’ Arya says to him, with perfectly studied innocence.

Clegane gets up, begins to walk to his horse, turns, takes two paces back towards Arya, looking like he might dismember her, before stomping off.

I point a parsnip at her. ‘You are a very entertaining young lady,’ I say.

She has her teeth in the turnip. ‘I’m not a lady,’ she says.

**Arya**

‘You little shit,’ he says. His breath smells of raw carrot. Your feet aren’t currently touching the ground.

‘I’m sorry,’ you say, helpless with laughter, even though you’re being partially-strangled. ‘It’s just that – why would you want to be all polite and nice now? You never were before.’

The material of your shirt around your neck loosens slightly. ‘Don’t play the innocent with me, girl,’ the Hound says. ‘You know exactly what you’re doing. Little cuntbitch.’

‘You don’t like all that highborn stuff. You always said it was best to speak plainly.’ He lets you down and you drop to your knees, spluttering, watching him stride off.

The four of you have turned around, and are heading away from the Eyrie. It was agreed, by all of you, though you couldn’t quite understand why he assented. There’s talk of heading north, to the Manderleys. Jaime and the Hound don’t want to travel up the Neck, say it’s too risky. Instead, you’ll go around the base of the Vale and take a boat from Gulltown, past The Fingers and The Bite to White Harbour. You don’t really feel convinced. But at least further north feels truer, truer to your Stark blood, and nearer to Jon.

***

Later, over a fire, you pick at a hind legbone. Sansa’s rabbit and vegetable stew was the best thing you’ve ever tasted, and you tell her so, that it’s better than anything you ever had at a feast at Winterfell. Her cheeks pink slightly and she looks proud. 

The Hound is shovelling the last of his down, tipping the bowl up, which you suppose is his way of telling her how much he likes it. He’s sitting quite near you both, on Sansa’s side, and has been telling you about all the dogs he used to work with at Clegane’s Keep, and how he would train them to do tricks as well as fetch felled geese. Sansa’s cheeks have been pinking a bit at that, too, though it might be the heat of the fire.

‘No ransom for you, then,’ you say, loudly enough that everyone can hear.

His bowl comes down and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

Jaime sits up a little. ‘What’s that?’

‘The ransom. The Hound was taking me to the Eyrie so he could sell me to our aunt.’

Sansa’s face is in shadow. She looks between you and the Hound. ‘Is that true?’ she says to him.

He catches your eye and throws his bowl down on the ground. A tiny bit of mushy carrot falls out. You’ll pick that up in a moment. ‘Ay, what of it?’ he says, and you realise that maybe you’ll lose this one. Sometimes he really doesn’t care how people see him. 

‘I thought –‘ Sansa begins to say, before looking over at Jaime.

‘Did I not tell you before, about a hundred years ago?’ he says to her. ‘I’m not a fucking knight. I do things to benefit me, not anyone else. The Brotherhood stole my coin, all of it, and left me with the clothes on my back and _some_ of my skin untouched by fire. I had nothing, ‘til _she _came running.’ He glares at you, digs his nail furiously into his teeth to remove a bit of rabbit. ‘I’ve been trying to get rid of her but your family keep dropping like flies.’__

__‘But then –‘ Sansa’s voice becomes more gentle. ‘Why did you say yes to leaving the Vale?’_ _

__‘Because Baelish is a cunt,’ he says. ‘I’d sooner leave you in the hands of Lord fucking Bolton than him.’ He gets up. ‘I need a piss.’ He disappears into the shadows. You know it’s not true. You know he’d not leave you with the Boltons._ _

__There’s a sound, and you think, that was the quickest piss ever._ _

__But it’s not him. It’s two men, big as giants, carrying axes and a mace._ _


	14. Chapter 14

**The Hound**

I listen to my stream of piss spattering the rock. Gods, she gets on my fucking wick. They all do. Golden boy, somehow still perfect even with only one hand – like to see how people are with him if half his face was falling off his skull – smirking at me. And her – she’s so much calmer than she used to be, than she’s any right to be, just sitting there like the damned Mother, like she can draw some fucking soul out of me, and - I don’t fucking know anymore. 

There’s noise behind me, back at the camp. Maybe the wolfgirl has fallen down a hole. I hope she has – no, that’s not the sound of falling. 

It’s the sound of fighting.

**Jaime**

I’m rising, and though my right arm almost responds more quickly than my left, I get to the hilt of my sword.

‘Pretty little party,’ says one of them, a man, if you could call him that, with half a mouth full of black teeth and a ginger beard that reaches down to his belly. His voice is garbled, rough, and he wears a necklace of unnervingly small human skulls. Both earlobes are shrivelled.

‘A quiet one,’ I say. ‘We’ll be out of your way soon enough.’

Arya is also standing, her hand by her hip. Sansa looks pale.

‘You’re in our way now,’ says the other, taller still, who has two fingers missing, blackened stumps, and a great diagonal scar across his face.

They’re Burned Men, of course. One of the Mountain clans. Men who can’t spell the word clemency, let alone practise granting it. Tyrion told me about this sort, with a misty-eyed fondness I’m not sure they quite deserve. They’re both dressed in rough hides and furs and don’t look like they plan to be gone in a hurry.

‘Briefly, whilst we rest our horses for the night,’ I say, not having much choice. Where in the seven hells is Clegane? 

‘Give us your gold.’

‘Gold is something I wished I had,’ I lie. ‘At best, I can offer you a turnip.’

The scarred one is staring at Sansa, who shrinks under his scrutiny. ‘Look at that one,’ he says to his companion. ‘Prettier than a mountain stream.’

The bearded one nods and strokes his beard, his axe idle in his other hand. ‘Maybe you’ll make her as wet as one.’

‘Fuck you,’ says Arya, and they turn, surprised. 

‘Thought that was a boy,’ says the bearded one, bending down, peering at her. I grip my sword, wondering where best to bury it. 

‘One each, then.’ 

Arya spits, violently.

The bearded one looks impressed. ‘I’m having that one.’

‘I’m afraid these women are very much mine,’ I say.

The scarred one brings his shoulders back. His chest is about as big as a fishing boat. ‘If you won’t give us your money, we’ll have your women.’

There’s that moment, the great, smoothing calm before a fight, when you can smell the iron in the air, and all sound drops away. This is one of those moments. 

‘No,’ I say, ‘I really don’t feel like sharing,’ and draw my sword.

**Arya**

They’re hideous. They smell of rotting fish and look worse. They talk of taking you and Sansa and you think, I’ll kill us both before that ever happens. You wonder why Jaime hasn’t chopped both their heads off. Perhaps he really isn’t a good swordsman anymore and he knows it. 

You think, what would Syrio do. And you think, what would the Hound do.

And then, in the gloom of the twilight, the axes are lifted high and everything happens very fast. Jaime’s sword moves quickly, and you push Sansa out of the way, behind a tree trunk, and dash back out to help him.

**The Hound**

Two big fuckers, bigger than me, bigger than my brother, just. 

Axes are out and one of them has a mace in the air, wheeling it, aiming for Arya, who’s on the floor. I jump in, catch it with my sword. The power of the metal almost takes my arm off. He turns, surprised, and I bring my sword up to his chest but he barrels practically through me and knocks me over.

I stumble back up and Lannister’s trying to fight both at once, Arya wheeling around somewhere behind, aiming for hearts. Sansa’s nowhere to be seen.

I grab my sword, swipe it at the back of one’s legs. He kneels, half-turns and I crack my skull into his as I rise up. Face down in the mud. 

I go down again, something whacked into my ear from behind, before the man who did it grunts. Arya’s hand on me, pulling me up. Lannister’s against a tree and I move to help him. The cunt’s handy with that bloody axe, can take two of us, almost, mace like a dragon in the air. Hard to get close. 

The other one’s up again, coming. I whip round, slice him better this time, and turn to find Lannister breathing over the other one, his sword at his throat.

The fire sends monsters shadowing over his face. He’s got a scar almost as good as mine. 

He knows he’s done. He looks up at me, at my face. _You’re one of us_ , he says.

Burned men. Men who burn themselves on _purpose_. I never heard of something so stupid in all my life. _I’m not one of anyone_ , I say, and chop his head off.

There’s a ringing, metal clang from behind me and I turn round to see Sansa with the stewpot in both hands, having just bashed the other one’s forehead with it. I’m about to say, _just making sure, are you_? or _he insult your stew_? when I see her face properly. Fear, mouth open.

And I can see what she’s looking at. The girl.

**Jaime**

Arya has an axe buried in her leg. The bearded one did have her, though perhaps not the way he’d imagined, before he took his last breath and Sansa made a dent in his skull. 

‘Alright, girl, you’re alright,’ says Clegane, crouching over her, though that has hardly sounded less true. 

She’s whimpering, vole-like noises, braver than she has any right to be. Sansa’s hands flutter over her torso, her hair.

Clegane’s breathing is slowing and he looks with a strange, calm stillness at the axe and back at Arya. ‘Got to get that out of you,’ he says, nodding at the blade. Her eyes are huge, and she’s shaking violently with the shock of it. ‘It’s not too deep,’ he says. She nods. 

He looks at Sansa, who is breathing very quickly and quietly, and she shuffles up nearer her sister’s head and kisses her cheek. ‘Arya,’ she says, with all the love and fear I’ve ever heard.

Arya doesn’t say anything. She’s too consumed by the pain. I grab wine, water, and a shirt and kneel down on the other side of her.

Clegane stretches his nearest hand up to her face, holding it horizontal right in front of her lips. She stares at him, not understanding.

‘Bite hard.’

She opens her mouth and lets him slot his palm in between her teeth. 

‘Look at your sister,’ he says, and she looks at him for a moment longer before letting her eyes slide over to her. Sansa brings Arya’s hand into her lap and gives her a weak smile.

Clegane gives me half a grim glance and I nod at him, placing my good hand on her shin, my forearm on the other side, pressing hard, ready to stem the blood as best I can. It’s hit the bone, I can see that much. He feels carefully round the blade, stares fiercely at it. Then his lips come tightly together and his face sets, before the knuckles of his other hand tighten around the shaft and he gives one, clean tug. 

Arya doesn’t make a single sound, her teeth clamped around Clegane’s hand, her eyes wide. The blade glints silver and red in the light of the fire. 

She looks at him.

‘Good girl,’ he says, and she passes out.

**Arya**

Just before he does it, you’re sure you hear something. Somewhere, far away, a wolf is howling.

**The Hound**

Gods damn it. The blade looks ridiculous in her, twice as big as it should. I pull it out, quick as I can, bile rising. I’d sooner kill a whole fucking tribe of Burned Men than have to do that again. I’d kill them anyway.

She’s taken a bloody big bite out of my hand. Teeth marks.

 _Got to find a proper healer_ for this, I say to them. It’s bad. The blade hit bone as well as flesh. Blood, a lot. Sansa’s crying properly now. I pick Arya up, shift her half over my shoulder. She’s still out cold, the wound bathed and wrapped for now.

 _Tarnberry’s the nearest village_ , says Lannister. Back inland. 

I’ll be quicker on Stranger. She can’t ride. I walk over to him. _Follow behind with the other horse. Tomorrow_ , I say.

I mount, Stranger fussing as it’s night, and they help me get Arya up, slumped in front of me like a dead pheasant.

Sansa’s looking up at me, her hands on the reins, though Stranger’s tossing his head. She’s full of shivers but manages to still them. _Please don’t let her die_ , she says. Her eyes are puffed and there’s a streak of wetness on both cheeks, a glitter.

 _I won’t_ , I say, and ride off into the black hills.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta so much for everyone's comments - they really help me keep this up! Hope readers are ok with short/sweet but regular chapters! xxx

**Jaime**

We wait until first light. Our progress is slow with a third horse, but we can hardly leave her behind. Sansa is pale as moonlight and saying very little, and when she does she sounds like she’s half in a dream. I can understand it. Her last thread of family threatened.

I’m bruised all over, my side throbbing from Burned Man mace in my ribs. Thanks the gods for armour. The sky returns our mood, a blanched, unyielding grey. 

‘What if she dies?’ It’s the first thing she’s said in hours. 

‘You two have proved very resilient so far,’ I say. ‘Don’t give up on her yet, my lady. I’ve seen worse wounds.’ I hold up my arm and she looks at it, sadly. ‘And Clegane’s not one to let someone die on his watch. Especially when he’s managed to keep her alive for so long. He’s a stubborn bastard.’ I smile, gently. 

She doesn’t return it. ‘She’s my sister,’ she says, simply, rather hopelessly.

Sisters mean something different to her than they do to me. When I think of that word, _sister_ , a word populated by snakes and storm-tossed leaves, I think of her tongue, her hands, the honey in her, the way she’d consume me. I‘d wind that hair around my fist, want her to bind me up in it, want to bind her up.

A year changes things. A year in the mud, facing your death every day. To come back and find her so brittle, like she’d been cast in stone – or perhaps she’d always been like that. Perhaps it’s me who’s been chipped away at.

We head towards the horizon, a chilled, golden colour I know too well.

**Arya**

It’s the worse pain you’ve ever had. Fire and ice. And numb at the same time, like your leg isn’t even there. It makes you so tired, this pain, and so angry.

It’s dark. The Hound’s slumped on a chair in the corner. He shifts when you cough.

‘It hurts,’ you say.

‘Ay, it hurts.’ He’s half in shadow. ‘You took a bloody axe in the leg. Not even I can make that claim.’ 

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, clasping his hands, and watches as you wince. The pain. Searing. Freezing. You wonder if it’s worse than being bitten. Burnt. It must be. 

‘You’re a fighter.' His voice seems to be a shadow as well, moving slowly over the walls. ‘It’s what a fighter takes.’

You don’t feel like a fighter. Your head feels loose, wandering, feeling its way around the corners of the room. Where are you, anyway? You want your mother. Then you remember that she’s dead. You try to lift your head, to get a look at your leg.

‘Best not move,’ he says.

Where is Sansa? You want Sansa. There are damp, bowed patches in the ceiling right above you, as if something very heavy is on the roof, as if any moment it will cave in. You wonder what will fall on you. Maybe a Burned Man, and he will have twenty axes and crush and crunch you into bits. 

‘Will I lose it?’ you say. Jaime lost his hand. Bran. Legs, hands, heads. 

There’s a pause, too long. ‘We’ll see.’ Never one to lie. You wish he’d lied, this time.

He comes closer, into the light. There are blood spatters on his cheek, and his eyes are shrunken and tired. 

‘It really hurts,’ you whisper.

‘I know,’ he says, and holds a waterskin up to your lips. You can see where you’d bitten down on his hand and it makes you remember properly - him leaning closer, giving you his hand to grip onto, the pain as the axe came out, so unlike anything you’ve ever felt, like he was sliding out your entire leg bone. 

You want to be sick. 

‘Drink,’ he says.

It smells funny. Not water. Wine.

‘This time you’ll want it,’ he says.

**The Hound**

She looks really bloody terrible, and that’s saying something. So pale she’s almost blue, sweating and cold both together. The wound’s stopped bleeding, but her bone’s cracked, and she’s lost much blood. Bled on me all the way to this half-arsed excuse for a village. They looked at us like we were fucking white walkers, until I threw my weight around, dagger at a couple of throats, and then they put us up in here and sent a lad first thing to fetch a maester from further off.

Room stinks of mildew. It’s crawling up the walls, like the spread of a forest after humans have all been killed. Maybe that’s what Westeros will look like one of these days.

We wait out the rest of the night, into the morning. I don’t sleep much. She does nothing but sleep, and I have to put my palm in front of her mouth a couple of times to feel for the breath. Still there.

She was winded, maybe ribs bruised or broken, as well as the leg. I feed her wine and she doesn’t complain. 

_Did you kill them_? she says, somewhere near dawn. _Ay, with help_ , I say. _You included_. And she shivers and falls back asleep.

In the morning, people on the stairs. I stand, ready my sword. I’ve half a mind that the lad was just sent off to bring back soldiers – there must be plenty of people ready to collect a reward for my bones. I’d not made any attempt to disguise myself.

The door opens, and Lannister and Sansa walk in.

**Jaime**

Sansa runs straight to the bedside, her hand on Arya’s forehead. The girl’s leg smells terrible. Arya’s eyes slowly open. ‘Mother,’ she says, and Sansa bursts into tears.

Clegane needs sleep. He looks worse than ever. He tells us there’s a maester coming and goes downstairs. 

They were easy to find. A young, hollow-eyed boy at the central well in the village took one look at us and pointed towards a dilapidated house at the end of a row. An older woman, pinch-faced, came to the door as we tied up our horses, looking worried, as if there was a wild dog in the house that she didn’t know how to tame. Perhaps that’s true enough. I gave my most gracious smile and put a little coin in her palm, and the drawn mouth smoothed slightly.

A knock, and I answer the door with my sword in my hand. A lad is there with an elder, Clegane right behind them. The man’s eyes are watery, full of mould, his beard streaked with something that looks like birdshit, and he only wears one iron chain.

‘You’re a maester?’ I say.

He bobs, both knees and head, his eyes darting nervously back to Clegane. ‘I was, ser.’

‘Was?’

‘Ay, ser. I was – discounted many years ago. I work on a roving basis now, in the villages about here. For coin.’

There’s a rumble from Clegane, and my belly fills with disgust. The gods know what he might have been dismissed for – sorcery, fraud, misdemeanours of another sort. They get up to all sorts, some of these men. But he doesn’t look lively enough to be one of Qyburn’s kind. And now he is nothing but a profiteer. We don’t have much choice, though. The nearest noble house is Harrenhall and that’s not a place we need to return to.

I bid him look at Arya. The Hound stands over him whilst he removes the dressings we made. She shudders whilst he runs his hand over the wound and, when he tentatively puts his hands about her ribs to test for bruising, looks daggers at him.

He sits back, running a finger under his nose. ‘We may have to amputate.’

A sudden wave of nausea. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No. That’s not happening.’

He fixes his milky eyes on me. ‘It’s the safest way, ser. To prevent infection.’

‘To prevent infection _spreading_. Is it infected?’

‘Most likely.’

I feel my patience ebbing. ‘Is it or isn’t it?’

‘It’s impossible to answer truly, ser. But –‘

Clegane pulls him up by his cloak, or perhaps there’s flesh under his grip too. The maester emits a sound like a small cat. ‘Then you heard the man. Do it some other fucking way or I’ll rip both your legs off and use them as clubs to beat the rest of you to death.’

The maester turns the slightest shade of green, though looks thoroughly insulted. ‘I’ll do what you prefer,’ he says. ‘If you can pay.’

‘Fine,’ I say, pulling out my coinbag.

He brings up a small brown sack, draws out tools. A clamp, and a thin iron, pronged at the end. I’ve seen it before.

‘The fuck’s that for?’ Clegane says.

‘I must cauterise the wound, ser,’ he says, placing it on the bed. ‘It's a newer model. Then a poultice.’

Clegane’s shoulders drop. He looks into the corner of the room, and at the fire. Of course. He’s not keen on seeing skin burnt. Least of all his own.

‘That’s usual enough,’ I say to him. ‘Had it done myself.’ I nod down to my wrist. Not that it made my hand grow back, but at least an infection didn’t crawl up my arm. The memory of the pain - both of the burning and, further back, of the knife itself - comes back like a dream just remembered.

Clegane makes a noise like bellows being squeezed their last and heads to the door. Arya whimpers, or whispers, and he turns his head to her.

‘You have to stay,’ she says, her voice terribly small. A trickle of sweat runs down her temple.

His chin comes down to his chest a little before he eyes her properly again, and nods, bringing his chair up to the bed. He glares at the maester. ‘You’ll fucking give her something. Before you do it.’

The maester swallows and nods smartly. Perhaps he’s not such an old sop. ‘A touch of henbane in vinegar. She’ll feel less.’

I move to the further corner of the room – too many cooks – and watch as the maester heats his iron, Arya framed on either side by her sister and Clegane. 

The dark metal glows amber.


	16. Chapter 16

**Arya**

The next time you wake up there’s the most disgusting smell in the room. For a moment you think you might have shat yourself, but you don’t feel soiled. Sansa is asleep right next to you, one arm shoved underneath a straw pillow, the other hand resting on your stomach, hot and heavy. A little bit of hair goes in and out of her mouth every time she inhales.

Your leg feels moist and padded. It aches badly, and there’s a feeling like your bone has split into forking rivers. You shift up to have a look, trying not to wake your sister. Everything tilts and swims.

A sniff. ‘Man’s done. We’ll see what a few hot buggering herbs do.’

The Hound is in the corner again. Rotting vegetable smell. And burnt flesh. You don’t remember much. 

Sansa wakes up with a start. ‘I have to change it,’ she says, looking at you. ‘The poultice.’

‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘Come sundown, he said.’

Bran was crippled. The last time you saw him he was jumping off a high wall as you headed south, waving madly. You could never imagine him without the use of his legs, lying still, being carried about. And now – he was nothing. Perhaps you are inheriting his affliction, taking it on for him. 

‘It smells horrible,’ you say. 

‘It’s mashed comfrey,’ Sansa says to you. ‘But the maester says it – might work.’ Her face falls, just a little, before she tries to look encouraging again.

It’s a little hard to breathe. That man, the one with the scar, had kicked you on the ground and you’d rolled up like a hedgehog. You feel so weak. It’s maddening. 

‘Don’t make me drink more wine,’ you say. ‘I hate wine.’

‘It will help you sleep.’

‘It will help me puke.’ You see a line appear between Sansa’s eyebrows. ‘He’s always getting me drunk,’ you say. A bit of the old fighting spirit. It’s there, just about.

She looks into the corner, her eyebrows raised. There’s a noise, like a dog being told off. Humph.

Sansa brings a cool, damp cloth to your forehead. There are little creases around her eyes, the feet of little birds in clay. ‘I missed you,’ she says, very quietly, and you know that she doesn’t mean just this night. 

Bran. Rickon. Robb. You mother. Father. ‘I missed you too,’ you say, and lie back properly, the whole room swimming again, tipping slightly to the side, back again. Maybe you are on a rowboat. There’s a noise, far off. ‘The wolves are howling,’ you say. ‘Just over there.’

‘What?’ you hear her say. ‘Arya?’ Her voice is becoming distant, pulled away by the wind, over hills, deep into forests where your brothers lie, panting, full after a deerkill, blood around their muzzles. Around your muzzle.

‘Let her be,’ you hear the Hound, who is a huge, black dog in the forest sitting with the wolves, say. ‘She needs to sleep.’

 **The Hound**

Me and the little bird, opposite each other, wine between us. I’ve thought about that more than once, though not usually with a bloody old miserable bloody woman hovering and a sister with a fucked leg upstairs. Lannister’s with Arya. The leg needs to remain still and the girl needs feeding, slowly, with water and saltbroth, for the bloodloss. Maester says he’ll be back tomorrow, but I don’t think it likely given his craven bloody squints at us.

I’m not happy on being here. I’ve never stopped in a village with so many eyes on me. Doesn’t feel right, somehow. No one’s given on like they’ve recognised any of us, but it feels ill to me. The old crone has told Lannister – course, she’ll talk to _him_ – that Bolton’s Warden of the North, which we’d suspected. And that the Houses have sworn fealty, House Manderley included. We’d looked at each other, then, and I knew that he had no more answers than I. These girls have fuck all place to go. 

Sansa’s been running her nail over and over the same knot in the wood. Can’t think of a single thing to say to her. Not much to cheer her up with. I’m not exactly a fool pulling coloured cloths out of my sleeve. And then I think, why do you care about cheering her up?

 _Did you truly get Arya drunk all the time_? she says suddenly. Her face is tipped down but her eyes are up at me. Cool, glassblue.

I fold my arms. _Nope_ , I say. She’s staring at me and I feel like I’m being unwrapped, like a nameday parcel, and that she knows every damn thing that’s inside. I shift. _Maybe once_ , I say. _But she started it_. She started it. I sound like a bloody child. No better than her upstairs. _She’s a bloody_ – I say, and I find I can’t finish it, because I don’t mean it. I sigh. _She’s strong_ , I say.

She lets out a little breath that’s sliced like a carrot. A stronger breath of wind on the glass. It’s stormy out. 

_You’re different_ , she says, very quietly, head still down. 

_Different from what_? I say. 

_From when you were at King’s Landing_ , she says.

I sniff. _I’m no different, girl_ , I say. _The scenery’s changed, is all_.

 _That’s not true_ , she says to the table in barely a shred more than a whisper.

I watch the crown of her head, the seam in her hair almost like a scar, the pale scalp. Truth is, King’s Landing seems like another lifetime in some ways. For most of my days on this stinking earth, I trained, fought, followed like a good bloody dog, and now I can hardly remember it. 

She puts her hand out flat on the table, not two inches from mine. We both look at it. Those pale, tapered fingers, like shaped candles, pearl-coloured nails, though there’s dirt underneath them. My hand’s near twice the size, darker, a mass of scars like someone’s been idling at it with a paring knife.

There’s a heaviness in the air between us, something steeled and shimmering. I wouldn’t be able to punch through it without breaking my fist. She keeps darting her eyes to me, a bit longer each time. I don’t know where to bloody look. The only sound is the old woman throwing plates about in the room next door, and the wind.

 _Were you sad about Joffrey_? she says.

Her sister asked me that too. As if I’d loved every waking moment tailing that vindictive little shit. _I’d be sadder about a pigeon braining itself to death on a glasspane_ , I say. _The boy had it coming_.

A tiny breath-laugh through her nose. Gods. The last time I saw her smile – she was not much more than a child on the Kingsroad, a high summer colour in her cheeks about being betrothed to the world’s worst prince. I drift off a bit, looking out the filthy window at the dying sun. 

_What is it like, being – not taking orders anymore_? she says. Her voice sounds light, aimless, but I swear there’s more to it than that. 

Less straightforward. I followed the paths I was given. Did as I was bid. Have to do a lot more thinking these days. Didn’t know my mind had so much space in it for bloody _thinking_. 

_Have to think for myself_ , I say, still looking outside, but completely tuned to the distance between her hand and mine on the table - like there’s a force between them that would sting you if you dared touch it. Neither of us have moved.

 _What are you thinking now_? she says. 

Seven bloody hells with the questions. She’s no better than her sister. And I can’t answer her truthfully anyway, though I’d like to see her face if I did, if I said _I’m thinking how fine you look in that dress, how fine you’d look in any dress, how fine you’d look out of it, if I rip it straight off the front of you, spread your legs, feast myself on you_ , and then I remember when she was stripped of her dress, all that time ago in court, and feel a dark sort of shame.

 _Best not ask me that, girl_ , I say quickly, which is the worst thing to say ever, and she just stares at me. 

Time seems to slow, stretch into something taut, grainy. It’s like she holds fire in her eyes and she’s melting my insides down, one by one. Stomach. Kidneys.

 _Wine_? I say. I mean it mostly as a joke, and to break up the silence that's as thick as pack ice, but she looks seriously at her cup as if it holds the world’s answers, and at me again. 

Liver. 

_I’d better not_ , she says. _More than one cup makes me giddy_.

I hold in my laughter. Not sure it ever makes me feel that. Makes me loose, forgetful, blank. _Feeling giddy now_? I say. Never said that word out loud before.

I swear her eyes flicker over my cheek, my beard. _A little_ , she says.

Lungs. 

She means more than she says. It’s like there’s a bloody crevasse between each thing we say to each other, suddenly. Bigger than the one between our hands. 

_Because of the wine_? I say, slowly.

A yawning gulf before she answers, her eyes boring me down, every organ turning to liquid. 

_A little_ , she says.

Heart.

Rain has started to fall outside, a sound like someone running a broom over a yard, over and over. _I have to redo the dressing_ , she says, sudden, moving her hand.

My insides begin to regroup. _Ay_ , I say, moving even more quickly than her, thinking, you’d better bind me up and all. 

**Jaime**

Sansa carefully tends Arya’s leg whilst Clegane stands in the corner, formal, as if guarding someone at a feast. They’re a curious sight, coming up together, not saying a word, Sansa with the faintest blush on her neck. What _is_ going on between those two? 

We all sleep in the one room, which means Clegane’s snores are worse than ever when I’m on watch in the second half of the night. I stay by the window, looking out at this pitiful excuse for a village, wondering how in the world I got here so soon after arriving at King’s Landing. From velvet wallpaper to something of rather the same texture but most definitely a different smell. From silk sheets to floorboards that doubtless are a ceiling for rats. Honeyed hogshead to stale bread. 

But I couldn’t stay there. Not with a woman whose heart is made of metal, and locked emphatically shut. And with a father getting more tyrannical by the second. Look at me - I’ve grown a damned conscience. Sometimes it itches, and sometimes it has the warmth of a cloak.

It’s a strange mission. But now that I’ve started it, it feels right. To see Sansa – and now Arya, too, should she survive this, safe. Clegane and I went outside in the afternoon with our swords and, once I was sure he wasn’t just going to decapitate me, had a sound training session. I had to swallow a gallon of pride in order to take his taunts, but in truth, he knew what he was doing, and got my arm working in a slightly different way. It’s bloody frustrating, going from being one of the best swordsman standing to this, hardly better than a green squire, but I’ve little choice in the matter. 

And it seems that Clegane would rather have me alive and fighting well. He cares for those girls more than he’d ever let on.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the mighty Jillypups, just 'cause. 
> 
> Sorry these chapters are short! Short but regular, just like I like my men! No, wait...

**Arya**

The Hound bashes the door open and comes in backwards. He dumps a small lined wooden bathtub in the middle of the room, the water slopping over the sides. ‘Lady said you’d want a bath.’

The next day. You slept fitfully, your head full of strange dreams, of fish eating butchered stags, of spears with teeth, but Sansa said that was the herbs the maester had given you, and the henbane. Your leg throbs, like an extra heart is lodged down there. But you feel a little less hot, less shivery.

‘You’re the one who needs it,’ you say.

He rights himself, gives you a darkly crooked grin. ‘Someone’s getting back to their old bloody self. Maybe I’d better give you some more henbane.’ 

‘How am I meant to wash? I can’t get up.’

He doesn’t look at Sansa, who is sitting up, stiffly. ‘You’ll work it out. Just fucking clean yourselves and be glad there isn’t a river outside I can just throw you into.’ 

The door shuts behind him. Sansa gazes at it. ‘He’s very rude to you,’ she says. 

You shrug. ‘I’m very rude to him. But he deserves it more.’

The bath is gently steaming. You both stare, as if it’s a chest of jewels and money that’s just been opened. A fog begins to glaze the small window of the room. 

‘You go in,’ you say. ‘I can’t. Not with this.’ You don’t tell her how much it hurts.

She looks at you thoughtfully and nods. ‘I’ll help you wash. Afterwards.’

You watch as she undresses. Her dull purple dress, her shift. She turns away from you, seemingly embarrassed, pulls it over her head and stands there in her smallclothes. 

You used to share baths, in another lifetime. In a world where your family surrounded you like a fur coat, in a place filled with candles and shrieking and the smell of pigs’ heads slow-roasting. When you were littler, you’d sit opposite one another in the water and Sansa would tell you stories about knights killing dragons to rescue fair maidens, and you’d make her go back over the dragon-killing bit, wanting lots of gory detail. Your mother would have to drag you both out.

That was before she became a proper _girl_ , began to realise that she could plait her hair and wear pretty dresses and make stable boys and squires blush just by looking at them, and everything changed. She wouldn’t play with you any more, and only gossiped with Jeyne and the other, fairy-headed girls. 

And now she stands naked, and you realise that she’s not a girl any more either. She’s a grown woman, with her sides all shaped, and though she turns and gets into the bath very quickly, with breasts too. And you don’t just notice that. You see faded colours on her ribs, like distant storm clouds, and one at the base of her back as she sinks into the water. 

Neither of you speak until she rises again and dresses, dries her hair, which glows in the dull light from the window. You used to be so jealous of her firegold hair and all the ways she could twist it up.

She drags the bathtub nearer to the bed and sits down, looking at you hesitantly. ‘Will you let me help you? To wash?’

Arya Horseface. That’s what they called you, first behind their hands, whispering just loud enough, and later yelling it as you ran away from them, having fired arrows into the wall right by their heads. You hear it again now as she helps you remove your clothes. You feel ugly. Skinny. You don’t have curves like that, and you’re short and, just like the Hound said, a scrawny little boy.

But Sansa says nothing, simply lowering the cloth into the water, squeezing it out, and carefully moving it along your skin. Her fingers touch your skin where you’ve cut it or bruised it, a tapestry of tiny wounds from living in the woods for so long. 

‘You’re so brave,’ she says very quietly, drawing the cloth down your arm. ‘I could never have done all the things you’ve done.’

She very carefully helps you to turn onto your side. You wince as she touches your ribs, bruised and battered from the Burned Man’s boot. She murmurs an apology. You don’t know why you’re letting her do this. You could really do most of it yourself.

‘I couldn’t have done all the things you did either,’ you say. ‘At King’s Landing.’ 

You have both had to play games to stay alive – you pretending to be a boy and a lowborn, and fighting, and her by having to live in that castle under the queen’s gaze, trying to say and do all the right things to avoid getting beaten, and then sometimes getting beaten anyway. Those bruises she still has. Seeing them heated your blood. 

‘If I had been there,’ you say, ‘I would have killed them.’

She stops, smiles at you gently. ‘Thank you.’ She crushes the cloth into the water again and brings it to your breastplate. ‘But you hated me at King’s Landing. I don’t blame you either. I’m sorry for what I did. I was wrong.’

You can’t be mean to her. You want to, to bring it all up again, the wolves, Mycah, but - 

Sansa gets there first. ‘I know we were always horrible to each other,’ she says. ‘But we’re older now. And – everything’s changed. I don’t want to argue. Not properly. You’re too - I need you. I need you to be with me. You’re my only family.’

‘And Jon.’ If she was horrible to you at Winterfell, she was worse to Jon, by ignoring him. She’d practically look through him.

She looks guilty. ‘Yes. And Jon. Do you think he’s alive?’

‘He’s definitely alive.’

She lifts your arm up. ‘I haven’t forgotten him. But he’s so far away. I don’t think we should go up there, do you? It sounds even more dangerous than anything up there.’

You know she’s right. You nod.

‘You’re growing, Arya,’ she says, quite softly, and you’re not sure if she means your body or inside. ‘I’m proud of you. Of how you’ve looked after yourself.’ She helps you sit up a bit. ‘Shall I let you do the rest?’ You nod again and she leaves you to it.

**The Hound**

Hanging around waiting for the wolfgirl’s leg to improve sets my teeth on edge. Sooner be moving, somewhere. We’re too out in the open here – the whole village knows we’re here. She seems albloodyright though, seeing as she had a damned axeblade lodged in her calf. Starting to sit up, answer back, good as bloody new. 

We have a day lying low, eating most of the old woman’s pantry – Lannister keeps putting coin on the corner of the table downstairs, and it disappears like a magic trick, though we hardly see anything of her. She’s keeping well away. 

There’s ale, too, half a jug of it, hardly enough to get a man to even think about being pissed, but it’s better than nothing. We share it out, trade war stories. He tells me about a woman-knight who carted him across the country, some ridiculous tale about her.

 _Being in chains sent you mad, man_ , I say. _Women don’t fight fucking bears_.

 _Believe me, it wasn’t a request of hers_ , he says. _Anyway, it’s the truth, whether you believe it or not_. He drains his mug. _And I climbed down there and got her out_. 

I snort. _You’ve gone fucking soft_ , I say.

He looks at me with those bloody smug eyes, holds his smallest finger up on his one good hand. _Says the man who is wrapped around Arya Stark’s little one_ , he says, wiggling it. I wonder how he’d feel about losing that hand and all.

As I go upstairs to check on the two of them, there’s a voice, singing. Sansa’s. I slow, try and tread light, though that’s a bit bloody difficult when you’re me. I stop two stairs from the top. She’s singing to her sister, I suppose, or at least there’s no other noise. _Save our sons_ , I hear, and feel something heavier than an axe in my gut. That fucking song.

I hang outside the door. _A better day_. What is it like, praying to the Mother when you’ve no mother yourself. I don’t go in for all that horseshit, but - _Help our daughters through this fray_. Her voice is as light as air, like a damned butterfly is trapped in there. _Tame the fury_. I close my eyes. No one’s going to be saved, in the long run. Swords aren’t going to be stayed, however bloody much some non-existent god wills it. Men are too far gone for that. It’s what they do, what they’ll always do. But I stand, hear the song out, wait a bit longer, tread heavily, cough, and stick my head round the door.

The wolfgirl’s asleep, her leg sticking out of the covers, newly bandaged. The little bird’s lying next to her, arm over her sister’s stomach, looking right at me. 

I don’t say anything. Look at her for a moment more than I dare, then move backwards, shut the door again.


	18. Chapter 18

**Jaime**

At first light, I take myself outside, breathing in the undeniably foul air of this village, which doesn’t seem to have much going for it. 

I’ve an ill feeling about that maester. He may have seen to Arya’s leg, and miraculously she’s doing well, but there was something shrewd in his eyes, I thought, behind the supposed fear.

The boy with the hollow eyes is outside, chasing the most skeletal excuse for a chicken I’ve ever seen. It’s decent entertainment for a while. He’s always been outside, hanging around, watchful. 

I call the boy. ‘You. Come and talk to me. There’s pence in it for you.’

The chicken gives an unholy squawk as he kicks it away and comes over slowly. A squint. He is utterly filthy, his trousers covered in mud and shit. ‘I’ll wager that you’re the clever one in this village,’ I say.

He crumples one eye up at me, and shows a mouthful of teeth like a raided graveyard. ‘Don’t think so, ser.’

‘You see all the comings and going here, though, don’t you?’

He shrugs and looks at the chicken, which is now hanging around at his feet.

‘And I expect that you hear everyone’s business. It’s a small place.’

‘S’pose so.’

‘Which way did the maester go, after he left this house last night? Did you see?’

The boy nods. ‘Ay ser, he went back to the way he came. Towards Brackbannon.’ So far, so unsuspicious. The boy pipes up again. ‘But he talked to someone first.’

‘Who?’

‘My neighbour. I heard them.’ He looks at me a little more warily. ‘Where’s the pence?’

‘You’ll have it. Come on, what where they saying?’

‘The healer man said that there was a dog in there.’ He nods behind me to the cottage door. ‘A big, wild dog he’d seen before. And that people would pay good money for him, alive or dead.’ 

Damn it. ‘Anything else?’

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, looks at my metal hand, and places one grime-covered finger up his nostril.

‘Or perhaps I’ll give you the same as I got.’ I lift the hand up towards his face. ‘I’m always looking out for revenge and I can’t say I care much who I take it out on.’

His eyes widen a little and he makes to run off. I catch him by the shoulder. ‘Alright, boy,’ I say. ‘I said there’ll be coin, and there will, as long as you answer me. What else was said?’

‘That there were two highborn ladies in there and that they shouldn’t be watched over by the likes of him. And you. Are they highborn, ser? Are they princesses?’

I let his shoulder go.

‘Can I have the coin, ser?’ He puts his hand out. 

I sigh. ‘Yes, yes, alright. Don’t go spending it all at once.’

He takes my one coin as if it were a box of rubies, holding it in his palm with awe, rubbing it with a forefinger. 

I turn to go. 

‘Ser,’ he says. ‘My neighbour. He rode off. Towards Lord Harroway’s Town. To tell the king’s men there. Do you have a dog, ser? I didn’t see one.’

‘I do,’ I say. ‘A bloody big one. Run on, now.’

**Arya**

Jaime Lannister is a very calm man. If the Hound had heard first that soldiers would be on their way in a day or so to catch you all, he’d have crashed upstairs and thrown all the furniture around, probably before getting royally pissed and falling asleep in a corner. Jaime shuts the door very quietly and says that you all have to move.

‘But Arya can’t walk,’ says Sansa. 

‘I realise that,’ says Jaime. But move we must if we want to get ahead of people who want to find you both and take you back to King’s Landing, or something rather worse. And cut your head off while they’re about,’ he says to the Hound, who growls something about balls and guts.

Jaime calls the village to the central well. There are only a few people, Sansa tells you, watching from the window. It’s a dying place. Others have gone off to fight, or seek work elsewhere. You can hear his voice from the upstairs room, smooth as liquid sugar, telling them he’ll sell them your horse to them in return for their silence. You think about protesting – she’s _your bloody horse_ – but you know that it’s best. You can’t ride, not like this, and it would be too slow to have to bring her with you all. She’s a fine mare, patient and biddable, and would nuzzle your hand in the morning before you mounted. You wish you’d given her a name now. Jaime comes back up to tell you all that the village has agreed. 

You can’t stand up on your own. Jaime brings in a stick that reaches your thigh, and talks Sansa through binding it up. You stare at the ceiling and try and think of the names of all the people you ever knew at Winterfell, just to fight the pain. Once it’s done, you get up off the bed for the first time in three days, leaning on Sansa, before the Hound just lifts you unceremoniously onto his back, ignoring your protestations, and takes you downstairs. 

Your leg is utterly agonising, as if being eaten by fire-ants. Numb and burning, from foot to hip. But you don’t say a word as he shifts you up onto the saddle to sit sideways on, and slides up behind you. You won’t complain. You are a fighter.

When the three horses are saddled and readied, you all look at each other.

‘Where are we going?’ you say. ‘The Manderleys are sworn to the Boltons. All the Houses have.’

There’s a little vein throbbing in Jaime’s temple as he contemplates. Then he stands straight, and swings onto his horse – you wouldn’t know that he only had one hand. ‘Fancy a proper boat ride?’ he says.

**The Hound**

_I liked it better when I had my own horse_ , she says, shifting, her elbow going into my neck. 

We’re back in forestland, tall reddish pines, spikes and needles everywhere. The sun’s cold, glaring its damndest through the trunks.

 _You and me both_ , I say. _Stop fucking moving around_. 

We’re heading for a boat, still. But not Gulltown. Saltpans. Lannister has proposed we find passage over the Narrow Sea, and get them to Essos for the time being. _Until things settle down_ , he’d said, as if this whole bloody war was just a storm in a claymug, and not tearing the whole land apart. Fuck knows when things will settle down, but I don’t have any better answers. But I’m beginning to feel like this journey is getting out of control, growing a mind of its bloody own. First the Twins, then the Vale, then about to head North, now this. Over the water. Arya had looked excited, had said _Braavos_! and looked at me, remembering I’d talked about it. I feel a sort of dull annoyance, that we might go over there together. It was supposed to be my place. My future. Not theirs.

I keep my eyes on Sansa’s back up ahead as she and Lannister weave through the trees ahead of us, picture her back as straight as a lance even though it’s covered by that cloak.

Arya cranes round to me and I don’t look away in time. She narrows her eyes at me. _You know there’s no way in seven hells she’s ever going to think of you like that_ , she says.

 _The fuck you talking about_? I say.

 _You know_ , she says. _I know you know_. She looks straight ahead. _I’ll kill you before you touch my sister_.

I shift my boot near her leg, which is sticking straight out. _Want me to open that wound for you_? I say.

She huffs, goes sullen. The mood changes and her body sags a bit, head slipping about. Getting tired. Trying her damndest to keep it from resting on my breastplate armour. I know she’s in pain, though she’s never said so since that first night when she was half-fevered. 

_Do you think I’ll be able to walk properly again_? she says, voice a bit more quiet.

 _Ay_ , I say. _You’ll walk_. 

_I need to be able to fight_ , she says. _I’d die if I couldn’t_. 

I don’t say anything but I know exactly what she means, even if it still seems fucking ridiculous for someone the size of a mangy rodent to be a warrior. She’s got revenge in her bones. I can practically hear it sizzling.

I reach back, pass her the waterskin.

 _I’m alright_ , she says.

 _Do as you’re fucking told_ , I say.

She looks sour, puts it to her mouth.

 _What’s the worst wound you’ve ever had_? she says after drinking, reaching round me to put it away, wincing as she does.

I stop Stranger so suddenly she almost falls off. 

The girl looks up at me, flat grey eyes confused, before they widen, glancing at my face. _I didn’t mean that_ , she says. _I mean, apart from that. I forgot_.

Forget. How could you forget? I think about smashing my gauntlet over her head but she looks serious.

 _Sorry_ , she says. _Really_.

I click Stranger on, and after a bit tell her about all the wounds I’ve had, the biggest ones anyway – spear in the thigh, dagger in the arm which dragged a vein out, Valerian steel once in my shoulder, getting my collarbone broken though I don’t tell her it was Stranger and I was in my cups. She gives up with her head, rests the side of it against me, settles in like I’m telling her a nice bedtime bloody story.

We ride, fast as we're able, until it's dark.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the awesome commenters! You guys really spur me on...

**Jaime**

We ride as quickly as we can, though the terrain’s awkward, a mixture of rubble-strewn paths and dense woodland. It feels odd, heading towards the sea – a sea I’ve been on but never _over_ – no time for that, once I was kingsguard. Too busy following behind Robert and bedding Cersei as soon as his back was turned. Which didn’t take too long. Though we can’t see it yet, I fancy I sense it, the sea, a widening out, the promise of something. A freshening in the air amongst the shit stink.

Though we’ve got to get there first without losing our heads or any other damned limbs. I’d sooner lose my head.

It’s too dangerous to stay in inns now, even if there were any. I try not to think about how many soldiers there might be, hearing about a six foot five prize waiting for them in Tarnberry, finding a few ragtag villagers with a decent-looking horse, maybe leaving nothing but a pile of bodies if they didn’t give the answers they were looking for. I did give that scruffy lad a couple more coins and tell him to look sharp, scarper if any trouble came close. But there’s not telling what some listless, hungry Lannister men might do. I try not think about it.

We’re back to camping in the open, and I have to hand it to Arya for her stoicism. She has hardly complained at all, though it must be utterly painful atop the horse, utterly painful moving at all. She does ask for me wine though, once she’s down, with a pale, waxen face, and I don’t begrudge her it. Becoming Clegane, step by step. 

He comes back from a piss – he doesn’t go far this time, in fact you can hear him pissing like a bloody waterfall after a rainstorm – with a large stick in his hand. While we eat the rations the old woman gave us, we all watch him split the top of it with his sword, pull the two ends apart. I have no idea what he’s doing.

He wraps some material, an old shirt I think, around one part of the forked wood, then the other, stands and brings it over to Arya. She frowns up at him, shivering. 

‘To help you walk,’ he says irritably, and her face clears a little. 

He and Sansa help her up, and he props it under her shoulder. She shifts her weight, her splinted leg sticking out slightly in front of her, and twists her wrist so that she’s got a good hold of it.

She hops. ‘Ow.’ Another wince.

She looks over at Clegane. She seems to need him to understand her pain. ‘Be glad we didn’t have it chopped off like the maester wanted,’ he says, whittling at a stick, before glancing at me. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

**Arya**

Sansa is staring at the moon like it’s a face. A marked, mangled face.

‘You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?’ you say, quietly. After practising hopping about like an idiot on the crutch, you feel exhausted and your underarm aches madly, though it’s still too cold to sleep properly. Your head is woozy from all the wine, and it dulls the pain a bit. Perhaps that’s why the Hound is constantly downing it as soon as he sees any. He was doing it even more than ever tonight, inbetween looking at Sansa _all_ the time. And the worst thing was she kept looking _back_. 

‘No.’ She flushes, and too late, says, ‘who?’

You grin at her and pull a face at the same time. ‘Seven hells. That is a whole shitpile of disgusting. _He_ is disgusting. All over. Believe me, I know.’

She looks faintly panicked. Her voice drops further. ‘What does that mean?’

You shrug, pick something out of your nose. ‘I’ve seen him naked.’

Sansa picks her head up and looks across at Jaime. He’s asleep, on his back, hands folded on his stomach, looking as comfortable as if he is lying in a summer meadow. The Hound’s further away, on watch. ‘ _How_?’

‘In rivers. Bathing. Not _together_.’ You feel like heaving, and pretend to. Sansa is looking at you thoroughly aghast. ‘It’s no big deal. I’ve seen loads of men naked. They’re all pretty disgusting. But him especially. He’s hairy all over. Ugh.’

Sansa stares up at the night sky. ‘Haven’t you ever liked a boy?’

‘No. Boys are stupid.’

‘But you want to be a boy.’

‘No, I don’t. I just want to be me.’

She crosses her arms over her chest and shivers. Even in the low fire-glow, the colour in her cheeks is worse than a whole summer rosegarden.

You relent. ‘There was maybe one boy. He was stupid too, but not all the time. He looked out for me.’

She turns properly towards you, nestles her head on her arms as if settling in for a story from Old Nan, part of her blanket wrapped over her head. ‘Who was he?’

‘Gendry.’ Her mouth curls up, as if you’ve just told her the name of a famous prince. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. He was a blacksmith.’ You wonder whether he would have been proud of you, killing men, getting an axe in the leg, surviving it. Sansa has been checking it all the time, and it hasn’t gone black. You’ve escaped infection, you think. 

‘What happened to him?’

Or maybe he’d have just thought you were stupid. A stupid pretend boy. You see him, kneeling down in front of Beric Dondarrion, trying to look noble, the overgrown black hair curling around his ears. ‘The Brotherhood made him some idiot pretend knight, and then they sold him to some woman with red hair and red eyes. He was gone, just like that.’ 

_I could be your family_ , you’d said to him, and he’d just looked sad. You’d meant you could be his sister, his friend, his – you don’t really know. And now he was gone, like everyone. Just like the Hound said. 

Sansa has a look on her face that is half-dreaming, half-frowning. 

Gone, like almost everyone. _She’s_ here.

**The Hound**

On watch, a little away from the camp, near the horses. The old woman’s wine – her late husband must have had a bloody taste for it, for she had a whole blessed store in the back she’d been keeping quiet about – digging a hole in my belly, though I try not to have too much, stay alert.

Men after me, knowing where I am. It was always going to happen, eventually, after slaying those men at the inn. Bloody Needle. Bloody named swords. Maybe it would have happened anyway. I’ve a face more recognisable than a king’s, though a damned sight less pretty. I feel them behind us, two days’ away, like a rotten pelt on my back. And with the others – might as well be holding banners up above our heads. Lion, dog, wolves.

I don’t know what in the hells I’m doing anymore. Before, I was following a prize, however small it felt – the promise of coin for the wolfgirl. It kept bloody moving, a written note dangling on a stick just out of reach, until it just plain disappeared. And yet I kept on moving, and now the journey’s not my own. I just seem to be _following_ again. Thought I’d left that all behind. Fuck the king. Fuck the fucking king. I feel like I’m walking round in circles. This isn’t what I wanted.

A shadow pulls away from the trees and I jerk up, fumble for my sword.

 _It’s me_ , says a voice, small and dark.

My heart slides back down my gullet, just about. _Gods, girl, I could have cut you in two_ , I say.

 _I’m glad you didn’t_ , she says, and stands there, a liquid shape, the light of the low fire behind her. Ringed in amber. _I can’t sleep_.

 _Try_. I say. _We’ve further to go tomorrow, and we’ll have to start early. You can’t sleep on a horse_.

She doesn’t move. The toe of her boot swivels in the mud. _Can I take watch with you_? she says. _Just for a bit_? 

Well, she never bloody asked me that at King’s Landing. Would sooner scurry back into her chambers than spend time anywhere near me. Once I caught her wandering in the hallways at night and she snapped out of it as soon as she took one look at this face. I eye the ground, nod. 

Sansa sits next to me. Looks up, at stars bright as new nails. The tip of her chin is like fine china. Some fucking watchman I’m going to be right now.

 _How do you feel_? she says. _To be – away from King’s Landing_?

Lost. Really bloody lost. I don’t say anything. 

She draws her blanket round her shoulders, shivers, eyes the stars again. _I feel like I’m floating_ , she says, in a voice that’s half a dream, that feels like it could only be heard right now, by me, in this chill night. _Like I’ve got no roots. No proper home, hardly any family, so I can’t quite touch the ground. I’m just – drifting_. Her hair’s messed, tangled like an overgrown bush on one side. She turns to me suddenly. _Is that what it’s like for you_? 

_Ay_ , I say. _Ay, a bit_. Which is more than I’ve ever admitted to myself. 

_Do you think it will be safe in Braavos_? she says. 

_No_ , I say right back. Can’t gild that answer in anything other than the truth. _Nowhere’s going to be, girl, you know that. But it’s as good a plan as any_. 

She asks me about Braavos and I tell her the little I know, pretend I know more, working from the Braavosis who’ve come through the capital - say it’s hot, make up a bit about what they eat, what they wear, trying not to think about her in long silk robes falling off her shoulders. Thinking only of that. 

She yawns, a small one becoming a gaping cave-maw. 

I feel my hackles rise. Can’t help it. _Boring you_? I say. 

She shakes her head, eyes wide, a little bruised. _No. You’re not_ , she says before another yawn comes. 

_Thought you said you weren’t tired_ , I said. _You could fit a bloody feast-table in there_. And I think of something else I could fit in there and try and put that thought out of my head except it’s all I can think about until she grins at me. A proper, small grin, one side of her mouth twitching, her whole face glowing. 

_I’d give anything to have a feast-table right now_ , she whispers, and brings the blanket over her head, like a Brother. She proceeds to tell me, like she’s starting a long ballad, of all the things she’d eat right now. For a girl built like a spring twig, she always had a good appetite. _Boar and shrimp and venison_ , she’s saying now. _And mutton. And peaches. And almonds. And applecakes and honeycakes and lemoncakes. What would you have_? 

And I think, gods, I could talk to you all night long. _Wine_ , I say. _That’d do me_. 

She smiles again, a little wry one, even though most of the time back at King’s Landing when she saw me in my cups I was breathing it into her face. But still, that smile, here, now – it’s a fire-glow, the only good kind. 

And then she sighs. _I don’t think I’ll be having any of those things for a while_ , she says. 

_Why not_? I say. 

_I’m not who I was_ , she says. _I’m just a girl_. 

And I think, all in the space of a blink, of all the girls she isn’t. Fleabottom slumgirls, kitchenmaids, chambermaids, whores of all shapes and sizes and colours, ladies in sweeping skirts, twopenny princesses with less sense than a gnatfly. _No_ , I say. _You’re not just a girl. I mean_ \- Too much. I’ve said too much. I look into the dense fog of darkness, look anywhere but at her. 

Behind us, the woods shift. Branches, though it’s almost windless, like doors just ajar. The leaves, little breaths. I swear I can hear bloody spiders crawling over the ground it’s so damned quiet. And I can hear her mind ticking, like a tiny metal wheel in another room. 

Then she says, quite careful, _Arya said_ – and doesn’t say anything else. 

More leaves. Creaks. 

Arya said. Fuck. What did that mouthy little bitch say? She wouldn’t. She bloody would. She’d say what she thinks she knows and she’d say a lot more. Mind like a dirtpuddle. 

_Your sister says a lot_ , I say, not kindly, to fill the silence, to pack the gaping hole of panic in front of me with words. _Never stops fucking talking. Made me almost glad to see that axe in her leg, just to have shut her up_. A step too far, and I know it before I’ve finished the sentence. 

Her shoulders sag underneath the blanket. _Don’t say that_ , she says, quietly, and I feel as cowed as anything, but stubborn, too. 

_Half the time she’s talking about how she’s going to kill me_ , I say, and the shock in her eyes makes me think I’ve earnt something back. 

_She wouldn’t_ , she says. _Why would she, after everything_ – 

_She’s had a bloody good go once or twice_ , I say. _Planned to crack my head open with a rock, only I woke up. Tried to gut me with her little needle, only forgot I was wearing armour. The rest of the time she’s usually talking about putting a sword through my skull_. I don’t say _why_ she threatened me with it the last time. 

Sansa’s staring towards the fire. The little wheel going again. Shadows flicker on her face. 

_Get some sleep_ , I say. _You’ll only regret it come morning_. In more ways than one. That’s right, dog, send away the pretty girl who’s sitting next to you, of her own choosing, in front of a damned midnight fire. 

She stares ahead some more then gets up, walks, twists as if to say something, turns back and walks towards the huddle that is that thrice-damned little wolfgirl who I’ll fucking disembowel with her own sword if she ever says a bloody word about it ever again.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Mari88, for being COOL

**Jaime**

It’s another day and a half before we reach Saltpans, which is hardly the glowing promise of freedom I’d hoped for. I ride ahead, with Clegane and the ladies camping a little way behind me at the edge of a wood.

It’s a sorry town, with many burned inns and houses. I dread to think how much of this is down to the name of my House – I suspect much of it, even if indirectly. You can’t train a dog to kill and expect it to stop when it has done what you need. Not once it’s got a thirst for blood. 

Two women eye me with damp, worn looks as I pass, nodding to them. They don’t nod back. There’s a small castle up on the hill, thin trails of smoke curling up from it into a washed-out sky. House Cox, I believe. Riverlands. Ser Quentin, or Ser Quilton, or something. Not a man with much of a spine, if I remember rightly.

I tuck my metal hand into my cloak a little more, and head to the harbour.

**Arya**

You feel cold again. You’ve been going from cold to hot every night, your leg too. You hate your leg. You want to add your leg to your list, which you haven’t recited for ages. You want more than anything for it to get better. To fight. To kill. To live properly.

‘I have a friend in Braavos,’ you say.

‘Oh ay,’ says the Hound, who is watching Sansa get a fire going. ‘Some fancy-footed oily-haired cunt, is he?’ He says it quietly enough that Sansa can’t hear.

‘No. He’s a Faceless Man.’

The Hound snorts and spits something disgusting onto the ground. ‘Fuck that. Faceless Men are nothing but a story to tell stupid little children who don’t know any better.’

‘They’re not. He wasn’t. He was real. He gave me three wishes –‘ the Hound snorts again and Sansa looks over. He doesn’t spit again. ‘Three men to kill. I could choose whoever I wanted, and then he would kill them. In Harrenhall. He helped me escape. And then he found me later, and I saw it. With my own eyes. He turned away, and when he looked back he had a different face.’

‘A different face.’ There’s scorn threaded through his voice.

You look squarely at him. ‘A different face.’

The Hound crouches down, picks up a rock, tosses it between his fingers. ‘Alright, then.’ It sounds like a challenge. ‘Who did you have him kill, your faceless man?’

You study the ground very closely, beginning to wish you’d never told him anything. ‘Some men. The Tickler. Ser Amory Loch. And the guards at the gate so we could escape.’

He keeps tossing the rock. ‘Never heard of any of them. What about the names on your list?’

‘The Tickler was on my list.’

‘Ay, and so was Tywin. And the queen. And Joffrey.’ He doesn’t say ‘and my brother.’ And he doesn’t say himself. 

You don’t answer.

He looks at you incredulously. ‘You didn’t fucking kill Tywin Lannister when you had the chance, when he was right there under your nose? You bloody daft girl. You would have –‘

‘Don’t say it.’ You know what he means. You’ve thought about it every day. If you’d asked Jaqen to kill Twyin Lannister, your family might still be alive. You watch Sansa straighten up, brushing twig-bits off her knees, and the fire begins to take. All of your family. ‘Don’t say anything.’

He shakes his head. ‘Gods, girl, you’ve a lot to bloody learn. The _Tickler_. Ser Amory fucking whoever.’

‘Leave me alone. I did what I had to at the time. To survive. You should understand that.’ 

He pulls his bottom lip in with his front teeth, a part-smile, part-grimace. He doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t disagree either. Instead, he turns his head towards the sound of a horse’s hooves.

Jaime’s coming back.

**The Hound**

There’s no ship for two days. Lannister’s been at the harbour, which sounds as empty as my stomach. And Lord Harroway’s Town was a little over two days’ ride away from that poxy village. And those men will probably be faster than us. Gods damn it.

We talk of moving elsewhere, but it seems a fool’s errand now that we’re so close. If we travelled on, we might only meet more soldiers, Bloody Mummers, Brave Companions, coming the other way, looking for anything with a pulse. 

Lannister’s saying we need to stay camped out here, that the inns are too risky. This bloody damp wood, hardly any proper shelter for leagues. Too close to the path for my liking.

I scout for food. Damned wood’s as quiet as a sept. Quieter. It makes my skin crawl. No birds, no rabbits. I turn over a rock. Not even a bloody woodlouse. 

**Jaime**

Clegane comes back empty-handed. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he says. ‘There’s no fucking food. Not a whisker.’ He kicks at his grounded saddle, and Stranger harrumphs.

We all sit quietly around the fire. All thinking the same thing. That we’ve two days to wait for a ship and nothing to eat. There’s no water close by either. None of us have eaten anything but stale bread rations for half a day, and now we’re out of that too. 

Rain comes, a drizzle fine enough to have been passed through a loom.

‘There’s food in that damned town,’ Clegane says, looking at me.

‘You know as well as I that if three and a half people in a village mean we’re recognised, then there’ll be a whole welcoming party in Saltpans if we rest there. We can’t get down there until dawn two days hence.’

A dog-rumble in his chest. ‘Who says?’ He’s been getting more irascible these last days, since we’ve moved towards the coast.

‘It’s ill-advised if you want to keep that ugly head on your shoulders.’

I hear Sansa take a breath in. The fire bristles. Clegane glances at her as if waiting for her to say something, a long moment, and when she doesn’t, shakes his head and stands. ‘Fuck this.’ He picks up his saddle and takes it over to Stranger.

‘Clegane,’ I say. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

He turns with all the grace of a bull-cow. ‘Like getting my hand cut off? You can fucking talk. I’m hungry. You might not be, but I’m getting some fucking dinner.’

The rain gets heavier.

**Arya**

You are unbelievably hungry. You’re weakened anyway, and not being able to eat makes it harder than ever. The Hound left you all to feed himself, like the stupid selfish horrible bastard he is.

‘Can’t we go into town? To the inn?’ you say to Jaime, with your blanket over your head. You’ve got the Hound’s blanket over your legs, your stupid useless legs.

‘No.’

As simple as that. ‘Since when do you get to say what I do?’

This time he looks at you. ‘With all respect, my lady, but seeing as you possess a little less than your usual agility, I’m afraid I do.’ 

His words are like smooth silk, raw-spun gold. They infuriate you. ‘Why do you use so many fancy bloody words all the pissing time?’

‘Arya, be respectful,’ Sansa says.

Jaime takes a breath in, and smiles. ‘I had a very strict maester. He would hit my hand with a thin leather whip if I spoke out of turn. Which, by his book, meant just about everything that wasn’t exceptionally gracious. Curses were most definitely frowned upon.’ He examines a nail before giving you a sternly amused look. ‘You’ve spent too much time with Clegane.’

That makes you even more mad. ‘He just says what he thinks. At least he’s honest. You were never honest.’

He stares into the fire. He doesn’t care what you call him. You could call him every name under the sun and it would slide off him like water off a swan’s feathers.

‘You’re the worst liar of all,' you say. 'Worse than that. You’re a _kingslayer_.’ You feel hot tears spike the corners of your eyes. You’re so tired.

Sansa puts her hand on your thigh. It hurts. ‘Arya.’ She looks at Jaime. ‘She’s hungry, that’s all. And your leg hurts, doesn’t it?’

How does she know? You haven’t complained. You haven’t said a word about it, even though it hurts when you move it, hurts when you keep it still, hurts when you think about it, hurts when you don’t. You nod.

The flames gild Jaime’s face. ‘That nickname is getting extremely dull.’ He looks levelly at you both. ‘You want a truth? I’ll give you one, if you like, and then I’d like never to hear you use that name on me again.’

And he tells you about the sack of King’s Landing, and why he killed the king.

**The Hound**

Fucking Lannister. Fucking Starks.

I’m at the edge of a street, cart-tracks having churned the mud up high. A pair of houses, dim light in one of them. An inn on the corner. I can smell something – pig maybe, fire-roasted, vegetables, and it’s enough to make a bloody lake in the corner of my mouth. After so long on the road, a few days eating most of that woman’s pantry has made it harder to go without. I’m tired of it. A fighter needs to eat.

Braavos. With him. A girl with one working leg and a smooth-tongued bastard with one working hand. I’m better off without them. And her - 

Smug fuck. He doesn’t tell me what to do. I’m not his fucking dog. I’m no fucking Lannister dog. Not any more. Expecting us to hole up in the woods with no food.

He called me ugly, and I know I am, of course I bloody am, but – she didn’t say anything. When he said that.

Someone comes out of the inn. My stomach growls, good and proper. I’ve no coin on me. I’d have to go in and throw my weight about. Ay, people might know me. Or even if they didn’t, it would be enough for a story to spread. Or for me to be followed. Give everyone away.

Faceless fucking men. If there’s truth in it, maybe I should bloody do it. I can do the other thing alright. Killing. 

And then I could change this damned face. And maybe she’d look at me differently.

**Arya**

You wake up thinking someone’s about to kill you. The grip on your shoulder has the force of a boulder pinning you down.

‘Alright girl, keep your hair on.’ A low, quiet voice.

The Hound’s crouching over you. Sansa doesn’t wake. 

‘What is it?’ you say. ‘Are they here? The soldiers?’

‘Not yet.’ He holds something very near your nose. It smells of flour, dense and sweet. 

‘What is it?’

‘Dessert. Eat it, before I do.’

He leaves it in your hand, and walks off the other side of the fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm worried this is all a bit subtle. But rest assured, subtlety will be going out the window in the next two chapters...


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhh, I'm excited about this chapter, and the next one - hope that y'all LIKE IT!! This is for TopShelfCrazy for sorting my shit out.

**Jaime**

Another chilled dawn has already worked its way into my bones. I can feel the cold metal of my hand through my sleeve. 

We roused at the first hint of light, muddied the fire, and took the path the few leagues to the harbour. No soldiers have passed us – we’ve all kept watch, even the sisters, hiding at the edge of the wood at a place where we could see the thin road cutting through a sodden hill. 

It’s a long two days. The rain has barely ceased for almost the whole time we’ve camped here, and has soured all of our moods. We train a little, Arya watching us, telling us we’re doing it wrong, that we need to find our inner water-dancers, which makes even I snort.

The Hound has stolen into the harbour twice more for food, apparently without leaving a pile of bodies, which is gracious of him. If we’re lucky, the houses he’s pilfered from haven’t noticed too much, though I would have thought they’d all have to bloody blind not to see a six foot five thief stumbling about in their larders. Perhaps he’s more light-footed than he makes out.

He’s kept an eye out for boats, of which there have been none, or none big enough to conceal us, as I’d already surmised. Each time he’s come back looking more foul than the last, but I’m not going to complain when he’s got a small sack of bread and vegetables, and the second time, a very crushed pie. We try and get much of it down Arya’s throat – she’s holding fast, but the sooner we get her in a warm, safer place, the better it’ll be. Look at me, a bloody nursemaid and septon and guard wrapped into one half-handed package. Less kingsguard than _princess_ guard, though I wouldn’t dare say that aloud without her giving me a look like she’s planning my slow torture, possibly with manacles and forceps involved.

Still, telling them both about Aerys seemed to make a difference. I didn’t mean to – but she’d riled me just enough. And tiredness and cold loosens a man’s tongue, I suppose. Since then, the girl’s eyed me differently, measuring me up as if she’s my armourer. And Sansa’s voice is softer than ever, as soft as this drizzle.

Saltpans comes into view, the grotty hills opening out, the small sweep of harbour. And – damn it - no boats.

**The Hound**

_Where the fuck is it_? I say.

 _Beats me_ , Lannister says, as if he’s just been told he has to have figs for breakfast rather than apricots or some shit. Gets my back up more than anything, the way he speaks as if nothing fucking matters. _I was told there’d be two trade ships here at sunrise_. 

Fuck’s sake. We’ve just made the journey down here, can hardly go back now, and there’s not even a pissing reedboat in the harbour, apart from a one-man coracle tucked in at the end.

 _I know she’s small_ , I say, _but even she wouldn’t fucking fit in that_.

 _Fuck off_ , says Arya, who’s woken up in front of me on Stranger, her hair matted to her face like the squashed body of a dead rat.

 _What do we do now_? says Sansa as her horse shakes its neck about.

A long, measured inhalation from Lannister, casual as a damned yawn. He squints around. _Let’s get in there_ , he says, nodding at the inn I’d scoped out before.

Bloody hypocrite. Two and a half days out in the open, freezing our arses off to avoid being seen, and now we’re going to stroll right in. 

There are two horses in the stable. One big chestnut courser, a smaller black palfrey. No banners, and no regalia. Not the horses of soldiers. 

_Fine_ , I say. 

**Arya**

Everyone’s tense. It’s worse for you – if something happens, you won’t be able to do anything, not properly. Not run, or fight. You’ll be as easy to spike as a straw dummy.

There’s no one in the tavern. It’s too early. The landlady looked sour as mouldy old lemons at having to let you all in, but Jaime smiled sweetly enough, as did you and Sansa. The Hound definitely didn’t. 

It smells fusty and damp, like piles of sheets left out in the rain. The floorboards are old and crumbling. The landlady grumbles as she gets a fire going, her ample backside sticking out, and you imagine taking a run at it, giving it a good kick.

Sansa’s drumming her nails on the table. Once they were fine, pearl-coloured things. Now they’re bitten, two are cracked, and they’re filthy as anything. She doesn’t seem to care that much.

‘Do you think you could fight? If you had to?’ you say to her, quite quietly.

She looks at you levelly and shrugs. ‘Maybe.’

That catches you off guard. For all her nails, and ways with pheasant-plucking and rabbit-skinning, you still couldn’t imagine her with a sword. Her skirts would get in the way.

‘I stabbed a man in the arm,’ she says, as if she’d just said that once she’d juggled three oranges.

‘When? At King’s Landing?’

She shakes her head. ‘Early on in our journey,’ she says, glancing at Jaime, who’s standing in front of the beginnings of the fire, gazing at it fiercely, as if an interrogator waiting for an answer. ‘We were ambushed at night, by three men, and Jaime got two of them, and he got the third, really, but I did stab him a bit. With his dagger. He was trying to grab me.’

‘How did it feel?’

‘Horrible. But – it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve seen. After everything.’ You know what her glance means. Father. And for you, Robb. ‘And anyway, you maybe don’t remember, but I killed the man who got you. Or at least, made sure he was definitely dead.’ She looks out of the tiny window.

You suddenly see how much she resembles your mother. It almost takes your breath away.

‘This boat better bloody come,’ says the Hound, sitting down heavily next to you. He doesn’t look at Sansa – in fact, he’s hardly given her a second glance for the last couple of days, though you’ve no idea why. She just flushes and eyes the table.

‘I’m sure it will,’ says Jaime to the fire, before turning his head to the window. ‘The weather’s not been illustrious. It’s a little delayed, that’s all.’

The landlady comes over. ‘You’ll need to buy something if you’re staying. You can’t just sit there,’ she says, her mouth slack and angry, her arms folded.

‘Give us some ale, woman,’ says the Hound and looks over her head at Jaime. ‘It’s on you.’

‘That tends to be the custom,’ Jaime says, almost idly. 

You hear the slightest rumble in the Hound’s chest. You know he hates how calm Jaime is, but you understand now that that’s just his manner, ever since he told you about killing the king to save the city. After doing that, and being slandered so many times for it, nothing fazes him much. He’s more of a knight than you thought, even if he does like fucking his own sister, which is still the most disgusting thing you’ve ever heard, and you’ve heard a lot of disgusting bloody things. No one is who they seem.

The ale comes and the Hound sinks one flagon in about half a breath. He hates waiting. He’d never sit under a tree waiting for rain to stop when it was just the two of you, would just make you go out in it and get drenched, just to get a bit further on. You hate it too, just sitting here, ready to be found, and no ship in the harbour. 

‘You shouldn’t drink too much,’ you say. ‘It makes you cranky.’

He slams it down. ‘It makes _you_ even more stupid. I had to carry you up to bed like a bloody toddler.’ He pours another.

‘I still can’t believe you did that,’ Sansa says, quietly. There’s a strange edginess between them that isn’t just the waiting.

‘Believe it,’ he says, wiping his mouth, getting that I-don’t-give-a-fuck voice on him and looking at her properly. ‘It’s me. This is all of me. This bloody face and this bloody manner. If you don’t fucking like it, then –‘

And then the door opens, and four soldiers are there, swords out.

Someone else comes in behind them, slowly, and it’s like all the sound has been sucked away. With the dawn light behind him he simply looks like another carved door, he’s so big.

‘Hello, little brother,’ he says. 

**Jaime**

He’s even larger than I remember, Gregor Clegane, and I wouldn’t have thought that possible. Gods damn it. I didn’t quite count on the Mountain being part of the chasing party. Suddenly I find myself wishing I hadn’t left King’s Landing to embark on this ridiculous mission. Until I see his eyes flicker to Arya and Sansa, like two flung bits of flint, and my blood chills to a temperature I rather like. If this is the way it’s going to go, you might as well be felled by the damned biggest man in Westeros.

The landlady comes shrieking up to the men, like a banshee. ‘Out! Out! Out!’

Gregor Clegane takes one look at her and thrusts his sword into her eye. It slams out of the back of her skull, and she screams on for longer than seems imaginable before he pulls it out again and she drops to the floor, the noise stopped as if a window has slammed shut on it.

He holds his sword up to the light. ‘Brains. Easier to clean than blood. They just slide right off.’ He shakes it firmly, just once, and I have no idea why we’re not fighting yet. 

Gregor turns and eyes me, a cold, hard stare that has no shard of respect. There’s not much point in trying to explain myself, I don’t think. I gesture to Arya to move away, and she shakes her head furiously. Sansa is clutching her hand tightly. 

Clegane sniffs and spits violently onto the floor. ‘You got nothing better to be doing?’

‘Believe me, there’s plenty I’d rather be doing, little brother,’ Gregor says. ‘There’s a whole line of villages I haven’t smoked out. Plenty of rabbits to squash.’ He cricks his neck and it makes a sound like a tree being split in two. ‘I heard on the wind that you pissed your britches at Blackwater because of a little fire-spark.’

‘I heard that you got slapped down by a fish in the Riverlands.’

‘Smells like fish in here.’ Gregor turns to the girls. Sansa dips her head, then brings it back up and stares right back at him. I can sense Arya’s rage, and her fear – the tight quiver in her is like a divining rod. ‘What’s this, then?' he says. 'Been dipping your hand into the river? Like a wriggler, do you?’ His smile is as cold as it is brutal. Truly his name. ‘I know I do.’

‘Look, Clegane,’ I say. Might as well have one dash at it. ‘You’re a Lannister man. Let’s not get all bloodied for the sake of it.’

He turns, and his armour clunks. ‘I don’t work for you. I work for your father. And the king. I think you’ve got a bit lost along the way, Kingslayer. I’ll take you back to the capital.’ He eyes my hand. ‘Maybe lop another bit off first, just to be sure you don’t do anything stupid.’ He looks back at his brother. ‘When I’m done with you,’ he says, quite quietly, ‘I’m going to take those girls back where they belong. And seeing as they’ve been in _your_ care for a while, no one will think much if they’re returned a little more hollowed-out than when they were last there.’

‘They’ll die at my hand before I let you fucking near them,’ says Clegane. 

‘Bad dog,’ says Gregor, and without a single other gesture from him, the men around him rush at us with their swords.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a bit ridiculous, but always wanted this to happen. YABOOSUCKS. *runs away very fast, with fingers in ears, shouting ‘LA LA LA LA’*
> 
> Now. Get ready. And… ACTION!

**The Hound**

The bile I feel for my brother is like nothing I’ve ever tasted. The terror at him being here, now, with them in the room, is worse. This wasn’t supposed to end like this, with her here, and her. And what he says – _hollowed-out_ \- 

_You fuck_ , I think, and put my sword up.

**Arya**

The Hound can take five soldiers. He can take five soldiers. He did it before, with your help. He can do it again. Except one of them is the Mountain.

The Mountain is pure hate. Hate made out of rock. And yet you see him and you think of what he did to the Hound, and you see him as a big little boy. A bully. They begin to fight, and it’s as if two great monsters, made up of different sorts of animals, have met for the first time and are testing for weaknesses. A massive bear-dog and a lion-dragon. They take up the whole room.

Jaime has four soldiers on him. He can take four soldiers. He can take four. No he can’t. He’ll die.

You want to run into it, into the fray, the clash of swords, the blood and the grunting, and yet your leg makes you a statue. 

A soldier comes hurtling towards the table, sent flying by Jaime, who is already fighting another. The force of him bashes you back against the wall, but Needle is already out and though the angle’s difficult and first you only get armour, you move to the side and slide it underneath his arm and he makes a strange high scream and twists and falls. 

Your leg. Your _leg_. You’ve lost your crutch. You can’t walk. Jaime has fallen to one knee, though he is still fighting. He gets up, sidesteps, bends low. There are only three. He can take three.

Sansa is hiding under the table. You slide under with her. She looks at you, agog. ‘I don’t want to die,’ she says.

‘We’re not dying. They don’t want us to die.’

‘I don’t want to live either, then.’

‘Then go and fight.’

She takes a breath, nods, and slides out, taking the fallen soldier’s sword in both hands and dragging it along the floor. 

**Jaime**

The little training we’ve done has at least got my arm oiled. It feels good to be swinging it properly again. I leave Gregor to his brother – not my fight – and concentrate on the other four. My heart has stilled, taken itself elsewhere.

One down, helped by Arya I think. Little wolf. The other three surround me, and we take it in turns to lunge, duck, twist. It becomes automatic, something I know better than anything, a dance we all know the steps to, though none of us know the order. But the hand is weaker. I’m knocked to the floor.

‘Keep him alive.’ Gregor’s voice is like a slavering, rabid dog, as he stalks around his brother, parrying his blows.

A hot sweet pain in my arm. Three soldiers with their swords at my throat.

**The Hound**

Fuck, I’m out of practice. I feel each sword-lunge like it’s a tree falling on my shoulder.

And yet this is what I was born to do, to kill him. To kill _him_. All those other men, tens of them, hundreds of them, all Gregor. 

_Did you kill her_? I say. _Did you kill her_? A different man comes at me from behind, something at my side, and I shoulder him away. 

_Who_? says Gregor.

Arya’s under the table. Good girl. Sansa’s not. Panic buzzes in my ears but I’ve no time to look for her, as he’s at me again. Hard. The fighting’s slow, as if we’re moving through sludge. He brings his sword up, both hands, and the steel-clash rings loud as a sept-bell. _Fuck_. I don't even know where I was just hit. Pain buzzes.

 _You fucking know who_ , I say. 

My sister. Our sister. I see her, behind him, between us, our swords going straight through her as she smiles and waves. 

He just stares at me, the man who looks like my father, like three of my fathers, and elbows me in the jaw, good as a crowhammer as he sidesteps from my thrust.

Sansa. A flash of amber behind him. She’s trying to lift a man’s sword with two hands. He catches my glance, grabs her without even turning round, one arm round her waist, lifting her up off the ground. The sword clatters to the floor. She doesn’t scream. 

_Little bitch_ , he says, whilst lunging at me again, hoisting her higher. _This one yours_? Her little scudding attempts to get free have no impact on him. _Just like I said_ , he says. _A wriggler_.

It’s harder trying to get him while he’s holding her. He’s not using her as a shield, just _holding_ her as he fights me, hanging on his hip like she’s hardly there. Tiny, juddering battle-breaths from her. I see Sansa, and I see my sister.

 _Did you kill her_? I say.

His eyes are like black ice. _I killed everyone_ , he says.

**Arya**

No one’s looking. Gregor has Sansa. _Sansa_. Jaime, nearer, has three swords at his throat. He’s kneeling, good arm behind his back, smiling at them, chin held high. No one’s looking. They’re not looking. You fumble for your crutch, limp out, hop over, and cut one of them in the leg. 

A shriek and the soldier turns round, sword held high, and you fall and think, I’m going to die, I’m going to _die_ and I didn’t save Sansa, when you hear a voice. 

‘ _Jaime_!’

A woman’s voice, and a new sword in the air, as long as you’ve ever seen, so silver it sings, a silver that is like a river flung into the air by a giant. 

And someone is pulling you away, dragging you over the floor, and you fight and squirm and it’s a boy and he says ‘stay here,’ and leaves you in the corner before he dashes back out.

**Jaime**

It’s so much easier fighting with company. Between us we fell two of them rather easily, before I feel rather faint and my legs go from under me. 

**The Hound**

I can’t get to him. Not while he’s holding her. He’s bashed me about, my shoulder’s fucked, and my jaw, and he’s sliced along my eyebrow - blood’s weeping into my eyes so I can’t see straight. He was always going to be the hardest man to fucking kill, and I can’t kill him at all when she’s right there. A perfect shield, made of pale skin and bone and the most beautiful - 

She’s flailing, and I think she’s trying to writhe out from under his arm, but instead she turns, grabs onto his face with a yell and lunges at him. Sansa’s teeth on his ear, pulling. He growls and drops her and I swing but at the same time he knocks me with the thick crossguard of his sword and I drop and look up and it’s there, the point of his blade, ready to come straight for me, straight for my skull and I think _my sister little bird wolfgirl fuck_ and then the sword whistles past my ear and I think _how the fuck did he miss that one_ and he looks at me, blank, and his armour’s grown somehow, grown and stretched into something silver, protruding in front of him, and he topples. And there’s a fucking big woman behind him, pulling her sword out of his neck.

**Jaime**

Eveything is quiet. The sound of blood bubbling from the mouth of one soldier, a couple of gulls outside. We’re like a tumble of cyvasse pieces, a game that’s turned sour.

Gregor made the sound of wood splitting, of earth groaning, as he fell, and shuddered once. Blood has made a great lake around his neck and he lies, massive, his head half-severed, in the middle of the room. A whole landscape.

I feel a hand, pulling me up. I blink away the dizziness. My arm, I think. ‘Perfect timing, my lady,’ I say, not quite believing that she is real, and here, trusting that I haven’t gone mad and am actually lying in a puddle of my own guts.

There’s a fleck of red across her nose and her chest is heaving.

Clegane spits a mouthful of blood onto the floorboards and a tooth along with it, staggering upwards. ‘Call that a lady?’ 

She stands very tall and fixes sapphire-cool eyes on him, breath evening out. They’re almost exactly the same height. ‘I’m Brienne of Tarth,’ she says. ‘And you?’ Her voice is as it always was – unadorned but curiously graceful.

‘The Hound, my lady,’ says Podrick, out of breath and with his sword in his hand, behind her. ‘That’s Sandor Clegane.’

Her face doesn’t change, but her eyes do, a little. Like ink in water. She looks to Arya, then to me, and to Arya again. ‘You are -‘

‘Brienne of Tarth, this is Arya Stark,’ I say. My arm throbs.

Arya is looking up at Brienne from her position on the floor with an expression of suspicion but undeniable admiration. ‘Are you a knight?’ she says.

‘I’m not. But you don’t have to be a knight to fight well with a sword,’ she says, kindness in her words that is almost maternal. The corner of Arya’s mouth curls up ever so slightly. 

‘Lady Sansa,’ Brienne says, facing her. ‘I’m glad to see you safe and well.’

Sansa is huddled in the corner, looking green, but she manages a shy, guarded smile. And then she spits something into her hand and looks green again.

Clegane is less impressed, looking at her with an ugly twisted sneer, not helped by the blood streaking from a cut at his temple. ‘Enough with the fucking pleasantries.’

Brienne is eyeing him too, with suspicion. ‘This is Joffrey’s man?’

Clegane spits again. ‘Fuck you. I’m no more Joffrey’s man than you are a bloody spring queen. And you’re the one carrying Valerian steel.’

‘Clegane has –‘ I try to think of a way to explain it that doesn’t offend either of them. ‘Accompanied Arya for some time. They’re a fearsome pair.’

He shakes his head angrily. ‘Don’t fucking patronise me, Lannister.’ He sits again, heavily, on the floor.

‘You’re hurt,’ says Sansa, wiping her mouth and going over to him. She crouches next to him and pulls at her sleeve, holding it to his forehead, and his shoulders drop, suddenly tamed. A different man. Brienne’s eyes narrow further.

‘Weren’t there five?’ says Arya. We all look at her. She’s looking around the room, dazed. ‘There were five altogether.’ She nods at the table in the corner. ‘There was one there.’

There’s a streak of blood from the table to the door. Podrick dashes outside, and comes back shaking his head. ‘Four horses. He must have ridden off.’

There’s a sound behind us. A small, angry growl. We all turn to see Arya leaning on her crutch whilst kicking Gregor’s head, which is a rock in front of the cave-mouth of his neck, before she pulls her sword out and stabs him, several times, in the cheek. ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,’ she says. 

‘You just killed the Mountain,’ I say to Brienne quietly. She purses her lips, looks mildly surprised, eyes Clegane again.

‘Alright, girl, that’s enough.’ Clegane stands up, his voice ragged and odd, and I’m not sure if he’s talking to Arya or Sansa, who is holding her now blood-soaked sleeve in the air, looking up at him. He flinches and puts his hand to his side. With a vague, confused look on his face, he tugs at his armour until he can get underneath it, and when his hand comes back out, there’s blood on his fingers. 

‘Didn’t feel that one,’ he says, and collapses to the floor.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For bexmorealli, for just now

**Arya**

The Hound is really hurt. He got a sword in the side, from Gregor or one of the soldiers maybe, and it’s quite deep. He didn’t wake up for ages, despite the tall woman, the tallest woman you’ve ever met, chucking water in his face. She hits him soundly on the cheeks and he opens his eyes and says ‘stop fucking slapping me, woman,’ and goes out cold again. 

Jaime, pale and limping, but as cool-headed as ever, sends the boy, whose cheeks are the same russet colour as his doublet, to check the harbour. No boats. Then he does that narrowing of his eyes into the middle distance, as if looking at an arrow target very far away, and tells everyone we’ll go to the castle on the hill. He commands the boy to make a stretcher out of a table.

It takes everyone to haul the Hound onto it. He groans, a sound from deep under the earth, and Sansa lets out a small noise like she’s hurt, before she frowns at everyone and tries to help lift it. It’s dragged outside, mostly by the woman and the boy, with Jaime helping and wincing a bit. They drop it and argue for a while, before tying it roughly to Stranger and the big chestnut horse, who doesn’t look any happier than the lady.

It’s a long trek up the hill to a short, squat castle with crooked turrets and a faded banner - a cockerel atop a hill - fluttering in the weak breeze. 

Jaime lets you ride up with him. ‘Are you hurt?’ you say.

He glances down at you, gives you a smile. ‘Nothing that won’t heal. These days I consider it a bonus if I haven’t had another amputation.’

The chestnut horse harrumphs and stops. The tall woman whacks her on the rump until she moves again. The Hound has slid slightly off the stretcher and the boy hauls his legs back on. He’s unconscious again. 

‘What about him?’

Another glance, another smile, perhaps a little less polished. ‘Think of it like wine. He’ll just need to sleep it off.’ 

‘Really, though?’ You don’t want him to die. His name on the list – like ink on old paper. 

Jaime doesn’t answer this time, squinting up at the castle.

‘How are we going to get in?’ you say. ‘Do they know you?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘But they’ll know you.’

**The Hound**

Fuck. Side. Fuck. 

Fuck.

**Jaime**

A rheumy-eyed guard comes towards us from the portcullis, pulling on a helm. ‘Who goes there?’

‘A visiting party,’ I say. ‘In need of aid.’

His eyes travel warily to Brienne, Podrick, the girls and the stretcher. ‘We’re not in the business of giving alms to strangers.’

‘Not all strangers,’ I say. ‘I’ve Sansa and Arya Stark with me.’

The guard peers up at them both, one at a time. Brienne gives him a grim nod that I suppose is an attempt at reassurance. He hesitates, before his mouth sets. ‘No one’s here. I don’t have the authority –‘

Brienne steps towards him, holds his shoulder in a firm grip. ‘Look, ser. You’re Riverlands, aren’t you? You’re sworn to the Tullys.’

He nods.

‘These two girls are Catelyn Stark’s daughters. Hoster Tully’s granddaughters. They’re in danger. It’s your duty to allow them sanctuary. This isn’t a damned trap.’ She speaks to him as if he’s a boy who’s been caught playing peeksie in the ladies’ bathhouse.

The guard’s mouth stretches to the side like it’s being pulled - a thinking face. He jerks his head at the stretcher. ‘And him?’

‘An injured dog,’ I say.

The portcullis opens.

**Arya**

Ser Quincy Cox is the weakest-looking knight you’ve ever seen. He is old and shivery, as if he is made of windows and they’re all open, letting winter winds sweep in. Unlike the guard had pretended, he most definitely was home, sitting trembling by his huge fireplace next to a table full of letters. Next to him is a large man in a cowl, one that covers his whole body. His eyes are dark and bright at the same time.

Ser Quincy is suspicion and fear, politeness and anger all at once, but nothing that Jaime can’t sweet-talk his way through. He probably slipped him some coin. He’s got a never-ending supply, though you’ve no idea how, especially seeing as his father and sister must absolutely hate his guts. Maybe the Lannisters piss money.

The man next to him is a monk. He is not as large as the Hound, or the woman, but there’s a quiet power to him. You can see, even with the hooded cloak, that his head is completely shaved. His manner is calm and questioning.

‘You’ve been in the wars, I think,’ He seems to address all of you, and his voice sends a warm, quiet echo around the walls. You nod, and the others do too.

The Hound’s stretcher is now laid on the cold stone. His face is dark with blood, the top of his breeches on one side moreso. The monk steps over to him.

‘A stab wound. The stomach, if he’s unlucky,’ says Jaime.

The monk bends down, lifts up the Hound’s armour and shirt. ‘I can help,’ he says, straightening. ‘If ser, you wouldn’t mind,’ he says to Ser Quincy, who bobs and nods and looks annoyed, before he sneezes and all his letters flutter to the floor.

**Jaime**

She’s as I remembered, though even taller than my memory served. That pale skin, untouched by the sun, which is no doubt terrified of her. Hair as white as blonde can be. Sitting there, one leg cocked up like a man’s, cleaning her sword calmly, she looks magnificent.

She and Podrick have been back down to the harbour inn to clean up the mess. Though it was early, it’s likely we were heard. No one else was staying there, but a tavern wench or two are going to come and find their employer very, very dead.

‘How’s your squire?’ I say.

Brienne draws the cloth down the blade and eyes me shrewdly. ‘He’s the worst squire in history.’

I hold my hands up. Hand up. ‘Then I apologise for my selection. Tyrion always sang his praises to the hills.’

A small smile. ‘He’s loyal. And he can fight. He just doesn’t know a single thing about horses. Or armour. My armour, anyway.’ She stands, resheathes her sword, and sits again. ‘Clegane,’ she says. ‘He’s travelled with you?’

I tell her how we came across them, and vouch for him.

‘And you trust him?’

‘I know he’s as uncouth as they come, but he’s not quite the wild dog his reputation suggests.’

‘There’s something I don’t like about him.’

‘There’s plenty I don’t like about him. His snoring. His cursing. He’s taught Arya –‘

‘ _Lady_ Arya –‘

‘She won’t thank you for calling her that. He’s taught her more curses than you’ll hear in Fleabottom. But – not everyone is quite who they seem. Are they?’ My voice drops at the end and she gazes across at me, and we’re back there again, in the bath-house, I half-delirious, telling her what no one else knew then, about Aerys, the kingslaying that had to be. Her standing there, steaming, as if she was magical, full of fire. Fire and grace.

‘And Lady Sansa?’

‘She’s well. As well as can be expected, given everything.’

‘I mean, her and Clegane.’

She spotted it too, then. Whatever it is, or isn’t. I shake my head with a smile. ‘A fancy, I’m sure. On his part. Nothing more.’ She frowns. ‘Come on. A girl like that and him? A wren and a cave lion would be a better match.’

She shakes her head slowly and attends to her gauntlets, before telling me a little of her travels, traversing the Gold Road and back along the River Road, asking for word at every inn they came to. They had travelled to the Vale a little earlier than us, to find Lady Arryn sounding madder than ever and Petyr Baelish with his arms around her shoulders. There’d been no word of Arya there, and she had decided to ask at the harbours, before perhaps trying further north. They’d made fruitless enquiries at Saltpans and were to depart for further north today after staying at the inn. Until our little skirmish woke them up.

‘I would say we must stop meeting like this but I’m rather grateful we did,’ I say, and lean over enough to catch her eye, which she seems to be studiously avoiding. ‘Thank you.’

She glances at me briefly before examining something extremely diverting on the stone floor. ‘You save my life, I save yours.’ Another glance, and this time those mineral-bright eyes stay on mine. ‘Again.’

A maid brings us hot broth and I tell her of our plans to go to Braavos, though in all honesty I haven’t exactly thought much further than that. Sanctuary somewhere. Perhaps Tyrion will have an idea.

‘I’m coming with you.’ Spoken as if she’s commenting on the weather. She doesn’t even look up.

There’s a small tugging sensation in my ribs, as if they’re being widened. I feel calmer, suddenly. ‘At least I’ll have a travelling companion I’m used to. Although this time I won’t be manacled for any part of it.’ I flash her a look. ‘Hopefully.’

**The Hound**

I wake and a man’s leaning over me, his hands on my stomach, which is bare.

_Who the fuck are you_? I say, and my side wrenches with the pain of speaking.

_Elder Brother_ , he says, not looking at me, and I’ve fear, then, for I know I’ve fallen into one of the seven hells and I’ll never escape him. I try and get up, try and fight.

He comes closer, puts a hand on my chest, and I see his square-shaped head, bald, and that it isn’t Gregor. _Be calm_ , he says, in voice that’s as smooth and dense as mortar. _The less you move, the better_.

There’s something warm and wet at my side and I fancy it to be blood but see it’s herbs, bandages. _Though you’re strong_ , he says. _You’ll heal well, given time_.

He sits next to me and I look about. A small cell, one high window, dust in the air like tiny gnats. Bloody cold.

_Where the fuck am I_? I say. I don’t remember much of anything, except a feeling like I was being thrown about on a cart like a giant potato.

_The castle at Saltpans_ , he says. 

Saltpans. Then I do remember. The harbour. The tavern. Everyone. Her. And her. _The little_ – I say. _And the_ –

_Everyone is well_ , he says. _Be still, now_. 

Perfect. Another man who’s as lively as estuary mud. Though he’s got a different feeling to Lannister, this one. _You’re the septon_? I say.

The man shakes his head. _I have no master but myself_ , he says. _I’m of the Quiet Isle_. His hands fold together. _I exchange healing remedies for things we require, from time to time. A rather strong strain of poppymilk for Ser Quincy and his nerves_. He gives a small, wry smile.

The Quiet Isle. I’ve heard of that. Monks who do nothing but plough fields and keep vows of silences and jerk on their cocks at night without trying to make a noise. Sanctimonious bastard.

He’s not moving either, just sits there gazing at me as if I’m a bloody big history book. Makes me almost wish for the wolfgirl to come and rile me. 

My head swims. Sleep wants to punch me in the face. _Are they really – is everyone well_? I say, my voice not quite my own. How we’ve come away from this without Gregor sifting their guts through his fingers I can’t quite – 

_They are_ , he says. _The two young ladies have been my assistants all day. They both seem eager for you to live_.

A fist in my stomach as good as Gregor’s. He’s still staring at me. I shut my eyes, let sleep take its swing at me.

**Arya**

Sansa has thrown up again into a chamber pot in the room you’ve been given, which is freezing cold, but at least has a ceiling.

‘You’re really ill,’ you say. ‘Normally I’d say you’d eaten too many lemoncakes.’

She rights herself, shuddering, and shakes her head. ‘I just – in the fight. The Mountain.’ She gives you a half-guilty, half-green look. ‘I bit him. I got a little bit of ear. It didn’t taste very nice.’

Making jokes about lemoncakes doesn’t seem funny anymore.

‘Why did you stab him in the cheek?’ she says. ‘After he was dead?’

‘Why do you think? To get him back. For –‘ For Harrenhall. For choosing one new person to die at the hand of the Tickler and the rats every day. Old women, boys, men. All of them screamed as they were burrowed into. 

But as well as that, maybe more than all that, you know why you really did it. You’ll sound soft. Soft as anything. A shrug. ‘You know, what he did. To the Hound. I should have put a torch in his face. When he was still alive.’

The Hound has been asleep or feverish almost the whole time. You and Sansa have helped the strange monk see to him, as he mixed garlic and sage with something foul that smelt like cat’s piss. Once he woke up and stared at you all, not really seeing, and said in a long shudder, ‘ _Fuck. You_ ,’ before collapsing back on his straw pillow. 

Sansa falls back on the bed, clutching her elbows, and sighs. ‘Me too.’ 

You lie there together, and you wonder if she’s dreaming of hearing Gregor scream like a little boy as his skin melts off his skull as much as you are. You’re both so tired. Being under a proper roof, a roof that isn’t some stinking inn or half-eaten barn or tiny village dwelling has made all the energy leach out of you. It’s not safe – of course it’s not – but there are thick stone walls, iron gates, turrets. For now.

There’s a soft knock. 

‘Yes,’ you both say at the same time, a pair of swallows on a perch.

‘My ladies.’ Brienne of Tarth is there, larger than ever. ‘I wanted to see that you were both well.’ Her voice makes you think of fields of straw and of hot milk. The ends of her sentences dip and curl up again, like a tiny curtsey. You wriggle up on the bed and she comes in, clanking.

It’s difficult not to stare at her. You have never seen a woman in armour, only ever in books, and that was just one or two, amongst the stupid simpering princesses falling in front of great big idiot knights. She is definitely about as tall as the Hound and she – she killed the Mountain, and doesn’t even seem that bothered about it.

Now, though, she looks as awkward as if she were at a ladies’ rose-tea party, her legs crossed at the ankles, her elbows as far apart as an albatross’s wings.

She fixes her big cow-eyes, piercing blue, on you. ‘Lady Arya.’ she says, so seriously and respectfully that you forgive her the mis-address. ‘Your sister knows this, but I swore an oath. To your mother. And when she -’ Her face falls a little, and you know what’s she thinking about. There’s shame and guilt there. ‘When she died, I promised myself. That I would watch over the two of you. And Jaime sent me and Podrick to search for you. Now I’ve found you, both of you –‘

Brienne suddenly moves and seems as big as the whole room. Drawing her sword, she places the blade-tip on the stone and lowers herself down onto one knee. ‘In the memory of your mother, Catelyn Stark, I swear by the old gods and the new, to watch over you both and give my life for yours should you require it.’

It’s strange, being sworn to by someone who has also been commanded by a Lannister. Nothing makes sense any more, not really. You and Sansa glance at each other. Sansa is blushing a little, red mixed in with the green. 

‘I don’t need protecting,’ you say. 

She doesn’t seem to have been expecting that, but remains composed. ‘I’m very sure that’s true. You seem like an extremely brave and capable young woman. You both do. But –‘ she puts a hand on the bed. ‘You must let me accompany you to Braavos. It’s my duty to keep you safe – to fight for you. Alongside you, if you’d rather.’ There’s a trace of desperation in her face.

‘We’ll think about it,’ you say.


	24. Chapter 24

**Jaime**

I find the old man in his solar, mumbling something about numbers. He’s an easy one to talk round, a few threats handed to him like plums lightly laced with belladonna as well. He doesn’t have half a clue what’s going on Westeros, and it doesn’t take much for me to pretend I’ve a command of some troops I can send a raven for. He’s not in his right mind enough to work out that I’m hardly going to be harbouring the Stark girls in the name of the Lannisters. 

There’s been no word of soldiers approaching. Hopefully that last man bled to death halfway up the hill. 

Brienne’s in the stables, lecturing Podrick, who has a pained, open expression on his face, about the proper care of calkins.

I tell them both I’ve got Ser Quincy to send for a boat. ‘Big enough for all of us. And the horses, shod well or not.’

Podrick blushes and disappears. 

Brienne straightens, nods unfussily. ‘Good. I’ll make sure we’re all prepared.’ The light filters in and adds a glow to her sallow hair. She eyes me in that thoughtful way, her face as still as set cream. ‘You don’t have to come, you know. It’s my sworn duty to keep them safe. You could –‘

Sansa had told me in a whisper about the grand vows she made to her and Arya. I can see it now, her clunking about, Arya sniggering behind her hands. ‘I could what?’

She shifts, as an uncomfortable horse might. ‘You could go back. You’ve family.’

‘To King’s Landing? Tyrion is the only one who would be happy to see me with my head still on my shoulders.’

A breath, and a measured pause. ‘You could make that family better. Tommen is king now, and he needs protecting.’

It gives me a pang to hear his name. The boy who clung to his uncle until the age of ten, a mop of summer straw hair and all the goodness Joffrey never had, even as a toddler.

When I look up again, Brienne is still staring at me, her gaze penetrating. She knows more than she is letting on. 

I narrow my eyes at her. ‘If you’ve got something to say, then say it. Don’t just give me that look.’

‘What look?’

‘Like you’re trying to melt me down and use me for armour.’

She shakes her head, looks to the stable wall as if about to address it, looks back. ‘It’s not hard to pick up rumours within the walls of the Red Keep.’ Spoken quite quietly.

‘Rumours about what?’ I stare back defiantly. Yes, I fucked my sister for years. Yes, I loved her. Yes, they are my children.

Her horse switches its tail. The hot, sweet smell of their hides, and shit and straw, hums in the air. I know, then, that she knows. 

There’s a moment longer of that heavy, pungent stillness before she ducks her head. ‘It’s not my business. My business is watching over those girls. If they’ll let me.’

I walk out with her. ‘Well, it’s my business too. Now.’

***

We look in on Clegane, who’s not dead, or even dying. It’s as I said to Arya, though I didn’t exactly hold much favour in it at the time. He’s probably had worse hangovers. 

That said, the look he gives Brienne is verging on murderous. There’s a thick tension between the two of them, both glaring at each other as I inform him what happened, how we got him up here, what we’ll do. 

‘Who the fuck’s we?’ he says. There’s a gloss of sweat on his brow.

‘Lady Brienne will be joining us,’ I say.

‘Says who?’

‘I do.’

A grumble from low in his chest. ‘Who made you the king of the fucking castle?’

‘Look, we don’t have to play games here. You know it makes more sense to have her with us.’

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ he says to her, not listening to a word I’m saying.

‘Like what exactly?’ Her voice is cool as fogged glass.

‘Like you’re trying to fuck me with your eyes,’ he says, raggedly, impatiently. ‘You know like what. Go on, get it off your fucking flat chest.’

‘Enough, Clegane,’ I say. ‘Learn some bloody manners or I’ll brand some into you.’

‘It’s quite alright, Jaime, I’m used to it.’ She turns to Clegane again. ‘You could at least have the courtesy to thank me for saving you.’

‘Saving me?’ His voice is as bitter and sedimented as Northern wine. ‘Is that what you did?’

Her face is perfect marble. ‘I believe it was, yes.’ 

Clegane gives an ugly, twisted smile, mingled with a wince of pain. ‘I don’t need saving. I’ve never needed fucking saving.’ I’m sure I heard Arya say that at some point, whispering it in the woods one night to my back. 

Brienne’s looking not a little murderous herself now. 

‘Let’s leave the ungrateful bastard to his thoughts, shall we?’ I say. ‘Perhaps I’ll get Elder Brother to add a little hemlock to his broth, see if that makes him a little more gracious.’ I usher her outside before she knocks him out.

**The Hound**

A girl’s there, her back to me, prodding an iron into the fire. For a moment I think it’s my sister, grown.

She turns as I move, and stands, formal, her hands folded in front of her. _How are you feeling_? she says.

Old. Tired. Like I don’t have a brother. Like there’s really, for the first time, just me. _Nothing a bit more sleep won’t solve_ , I say.

Sansa puts her head down. _I’ll go then_ , she says, and doesn’t move.

His assistants, the monk said. I wonder if she helped clean me up. The thought makes my cheek burn. My _burns_ burn. Or maybe it’s fever again.

 _You did well_ , I make myself say. Her eyes. Lavender. Or sky-blue. Or both. Bluebells in a dusk wood. _With my brother. You took more of a chunk out of him than I did_.

She puts her thumb to the corner of her mouth and gives an involuntary shake. _I can’t stop thinking about it_ , she says in a whisper.

A proper little wolf. Another one. _He hurt you_? I say. 

She shakes her head, before clutching the front of her ribs. _Maybe a bit bruised_ , she says.

The thought of my brother’s arm leaving a mark on her is enough to make me want to vomit. I close my eyes for a moment, try to beat it. Sense her hovering there, see her shape behind my eyelids.

 _You’re brave_ , I say, opening them again. _I didn’t tell you it much_ – I didn’t tell her it at all, I think – _at King’s Landing. But_ – I don’t say anything else.

 _He should never have done that to you_ , she says, and there’s a fierceness in her that’s from the North, full of granite rock and wolf-fur. _Family is – family is for keeping. For protecting_. 

And I see how much she loves her sister then, and feel more black than ever. _Family_ , I say, and the word is as heavy as a millstone around my damned neck. _It means something different to me_. A twinge in my side. She sees my face change and takes a step nearer.

There’s a knock on the door, and the wolfgirl’s there, balancing a plate of food in one hand.

**Arya**

‘Eat.’

The Hound shakes his head. 

‘Eat. You bossed me around, now I get to boss you around.’

He blinks, slowly, sleepily. ‘Stomach’s fucked. It’ll probably make me shit out of my ears.’ Sansa looks queasy at the mention of both shit and ears, and puts her fingers vaguely up in both of your directions, before disappearing.

‘The monk said it would be fine.’

‘The monk grows cabbages on an island full of mutes.’

Seven hells, he’s annoying, even when he’s sick. ‘You don’t know anything. He stitched Jaime up, and gave Sansa something to stop her being sick, and he’s put better stuff on my leg too.’ You stick it up at him, feeling like a pigeon with a broken wing, before sitting down on the bed next to him. ‘He was a knight, once upon a time. He knows all about swords and fighting and battles. He probably fought alongside you in one.’

He chews his lip and beckons your hand closer with his head, taking the bread from you with a sigh.

‘He was telling Brienne. Did you know she beat Ser Loras Tyrell in a tourney? And that she was Rainbow Guard?’

He nearly chokes on his bread. ‘Rainbow Guard. Spare me. She just followed Renly Baratheon around like a pathetic little girl, the story goes.’

He’s _jealous_. Jealous of her. You decide not to tell him any more about her, how she told you, gently but matter-of-fact, that she proposed that one of her suitors fought her to earn the right to have her be more womanly, and that she broke his arm in three places. 

You chew on a nail and watch him tentatively nibble at the crust some more, muttering at it. ‘Jaime’s got that old knight to agree to a boat for us.’ You kick your good heel on the stone floor. ‘More waiting.’

He stretches slightly, groans. ‘At least we’re in a bloody castle this time and not out in the damned woods.’

‘But they didn’t know we were there. They’ll know we’re here.’ You sigh. ‘It’s my fault. I didn’t kill him. That soldier. And now he can tell everyone that we’re here.’

Crumbs are falling into his beard. ‘You did alright to get him at all seeing as you’re a bloody peg-leg.’

He’ll never stop being rude to you. Not for anything. You stare at the fire for a bit, and he does too. He really seems tired, his face crumpled like a used handkerchief. He’s never looked more beaten. 

‘Does it hurt?’ you say.

You hear a breath from deep inside him inch up, desperately slowly. ‘Ay.’

‘You’re a fighter, though.’ He closes his eyes, sighs like an old dog in front of a fire, and doesn’t say anything. ‘Are you sad about Gregor?’

‘No.’

‘Why are you being so mean, then? Why aren’t you happy?’

‘Because I didn’t fucking kill him, did I?’ He blurts it out, and looks pained, and you’re not sure if it’s because he spoke with such force or because of what he said.

‘You basically did. You just had a bit of help. He’s dead. That’s the main thing. He won’t -’

‘Won’t what?’

 _Won’t hurt you again_ , you think, and don’t say anything. He glowers so hard you worry his stomach will rupture, so you use your crutch to hoist yourself up, and lean right over him.

‘The fuck you doing?’

‘Just checking that shit isn’t coming out of your ears.’ You grin at him and hop out of the room.

**Jaime**

I find Arya in the kitchens, watching Podrick peel potatoes. He’s happily assisting the cook – I think he’d rather be here than having Brienne scold him for the umpteenth time. I loiter at the door and neither of them see me straight away.

She is looking him up and down, leaning over the wooden table on her elbows exaggeratedly. ‘You’re quite good,’ she says. ‘At fighting.’

‘Thank you, my lady,’ he says. Definitely a blush in there.

She screws her nose up. ‘When my leg’s better, I think I should train with you.’

‘As you wish, my lady.’

‘Though you know I should kill you.’ He stops chopping. ‘You’re related to Ser Illyn Payne, aren’t you? Your cousin killed my father.’ She leans back in her chair and taps her nails loudly on the wood, a military tattoo.

His face falls. ‘As you wish, my lady.’

‘Stop calling me that.’

‘Sorry, my la- I mean, Lady Ar-‘ He looks utterly agonised. ‘I’m not sure I can. My lady.’

Arya utters an exasperated growl and folds her arms, but I can see she doesn’t mind so much, not really. 

I make a noisy approach, cough, and Podrick stands, puts his hands behind his back.

‘The boat’s coming tomorrow, first light,’ I say. ‘Be ready.’

She looks up at me calmly. 'I was born ready,’ she says, and places a bit of potato peel in her mouth.


	25. Chapter 25

**The Hound**

Brienne of fucking Tarth. The wolfgirl hasn’t fucking stopped talking about her, her battles, her sword, her bloody armour. She’s made her another crutch and all, a thicker one, made with rough-carved wood and twine and two nails. The girl perches on the end of my bed like a parrot that can only say one fucking word. _Brienne. Brienne_. 

Makes me think of my own name. Names. What I’ve been called for a score year. And my family name, my House name, the one that only Lannister calls me, that _she’ll_ call me now, that big dumb cow. That feels no more mine, even now, when I’m the only one to bear it.

Wolfgirl doesn’t call me much of anything. Sansa neither. The little bird just gives me looks I can’t work out. They haunt me, day and night. She comes and sees me, brings water, and I think of less and less to say to her – like I’m shrinking in her light. It’s daft to think there’s anything there. She’s just – she’s just a girl. 

Crossing the Narrow Sea, hiding out in Braavos, and how? On Lannister coin. With him. With _her_ \- the woman that both girls look at like she’s their fucking _mother_. Following fucking Lannister coin and Lannister steel.

Gods, I’m tired. Tired of everything.

The monk keeps coming back, and I have to give it to him, he’s got healer’s hands. Stitched me up well, feeling a bit more myself again. Whatever the fuck that is. His voice is as heavy as sleep, and he talks again of his life on that island, why men go there. 

_You’ve never given me wine_ , I say. _Most bloody men would see fit to give wine to help with the pain_.

 _Do you need wine_? he says, and it’s not a question, really. More like – I don’t know, a test. He looks at me differently, this one. Differently from most people. Like he can see into me, past the skin, blood, the warhammers of my ribs.

 _What man doesn’t_ , I say.

 _I don’t_ , he says, and leans back in his chair. His eyes are like wet mortar. _Which pain_?

I go to retort, _the fucking pain in my side, you smug cunt_ , but I don’t. It feels like a test again.

 _Which pain do you need it for_? he says, nodding at my stomach. _That one_? He looks at me as if he’s the wisest fucking man on earth, and his smile is a challenge. _Or something else_?

I don’t say anything. Look at the ceiling.

The monk tells me of his own wars, and I lie, and listen, and respect him more for it, though there was some _woman_ involved. He tells me how he lost his old name and got this new one. His voice is like waves, thick with salt, never-ending.

And he knows, somehow, what I’ll do. Before I do.

**Arya**

You dine with Ser Quincy and his equally shivery wife. They’re like old love letters in a high wind. He keeps looking nervously out of the window. Starting to get a sense that something isn’t right.

‘No one’s coming for us,’ says Jaime to him. ‘Ravens would have to be sent first.’

‘I’m more concerned, ser, about my own property. If anyone knew I was harbouring –‘

‘Just deny it,’ says Jaime, calmly. ‘We’ll be gone at first light, and no one need ever know we were here. No one will know, because you’re not going to tell them, are you?’

Ser Quincy’s hands flutter together like a pair of quails.

Jaime leans a little further over. ‘Otherwise I will be sending my forces this way.’ He places a forkful of buttery fish into his mouth and continues conspiratorially. ‘And they haven’t had any proper combat for months. They’re probably getting _quite_ restless.’ You have to admire his audacity. He’s making it up as he goes along. ‘And anyway, I’ve written you a note, have I not?’ You wonder if that can be real. Maybe all his money has been written on air.

‘Money doesn’t solve everything, ser,’ he says, his eyes misty with confusion.

Jaime sits back and looks rather pleased with himself. ‘Of course it does. Most things, anyway.’ You catch him flashing a glance at Brienne, who is scowling softly at him. He gives her a strange, quick blink and there’s the faintest hint of rose on her neck before she asks Podrick to pour more wine.

***

‘I think he likes her,’ says Sansa.

You are lying together under a very heavy fur in a freezing cold room. Your leg has to stick out, and your toes are numb. But it’s still better than being outside. ‘Who?’

‘Jaime. Lady Brienne.’

The thought of the two of them makes you shout one very loud laugh. She’s _taller_ than him. 

‘Don’t be mean,’ she says.

‘She doesn’t like _him_. She definitely doesn’t.’ 

‘How do you know?’

She has trained to be as good as a knight. Stupid things like men and kissing and fucking are not important to her. Definitely. Boys are so stupid. You scrunch a bit nearer to Sansa under the blanket. ‘She just doesn’t. She can’t.’

‘You’re very swift to judge, Arya.’

‘Guess it’s no worse than you and _you-know-who_.’

She looks a little bruised, then. ‘Sshh. Don’t – don’t say that.’ A sigh is sent up like a wreath of smoke from a damp fire. ‘Something’s different with him. He seems so sad.’

You’re not really listening. Jaime and Brienne. Well she _is_ blonde. You flop onto your back. ‘At least he’s not related to her.’

Sansa’s eyes widen.

**Jaime**

‘You’re sure, man?’ I say.

His jaw is set, burns stretched tight. A curt nod. ‘Ay.’

Clegane’s cell smells of garlic and wine and some more unpleasant stenches from him being in here for the last two days. Coming in to see how he was, and plan the best way of moving him to the boat, has been interrupted rather unexpectedly by what he’s just said, which is about as shocking as having a couple of teeth ripped out.

‘Look, I know we’re a strange collection, but –‘

‘You know full well I’m the most conspicuous one of all of us. You can dye your fucking hair but you can’t magic this away.’ He jabs a finger at his cheek. ‘People are after me. If word goes, and it will have if that soldier has made it any damned place, that I’m off over the Narrow Sea they’ll be after us. Even when we’re there – you don’t have to have made my bloody acquaintance to know me. If I stay here –‘ a great sigh. ‘Just one less face for you to have to worry about.’

‘Clegane, if there’s one thing I really can’t imagine, it’s you, _there_.’

He sits up, shoves the covers off his bulk. ‘You don’t fucking know me, alright?’

‘But –‘

‘Just fuck off out of Westeros, alright? All of you.’

**The Hound**

I’m working on standing, just about, looking at the fire that holds every face I’ve known, those I hate and those I -

Wolfgirl comes hopping in. _Tomorrow morning_ , she says, pointing a finger up to my face. _Be ready. Be born ready. Braavos isn’t going to know what_ \- 

_I’m not going with you_ , I say.

The inner ends of her eyebrows come up. She looks like someone has poked her with a stick, several times. _What do you mean_? she says.

 _What I say. I stop here_ , I say.

 _Why_? she says, a word like a jab with a dagger.

 _How long have you got_ , I say, and look over her head.

 _But_ – she says. _You – we_ – Her shoulders drop, and for a sliver of a moment she looks relieved. _I know you’re hurt, but we’ll look after you_. She screws her nose up, smug as hells. _Learnt quite a lot from that healer man_.

I bring my eyes down, make my gaze polished steel. _Enough’s enough_ , I say.

Her face hardens, then. Slate eyes, jagged edges. _Fine_ , she says, and turns away. She even limps angrily.

 _I’m not going to be your sworn fucking shield or whatever you’d have me be_ , I say to her back.

She turns. There’s a wet spark in her eyes. _I don’t want you to be my sworn fucking shield_ , she says, venom good as a viper’s in the last three words, and disappears from the room, her crutch making dull taps on the stone, further and further away.

**Arya**

You hate him.

Sansa is folding her cloak up carefully, gracefully. You go into the room, lean on your crutch, kick the bedpost violently with your good toe.

‘What’s wrong?’ she says.

You’re so furious you can’t quite tell her straightaway. You’d gone to tell Jaime and he’d said he already knew and you tried to hit him in the face but he held you away from him. Instead you bash the bedpost some more, this time with your crutch. You hate him you hate him you hate him. 

On the fourth attack, she puts a hand on your arm. ‘ _Arya_.’

You slump onto the bed. 

‘What is it? Tell me.’

‘He’s not coming.’ And that’s fine. That’s totally fine. He’s a fucking idiotbreath and you hate him.

‘Who?’

‘Who do you _think_?’

Something changes in her face, like a hand has passed over it, smoothing everything high and wide. The way you used to think of her, all those times in the woods with the Hound when you couldn’t quite picture her properly, before the day you all found each other. Her lips come apart slightly and she stands there, still as a statue, staring into the air like a fairy-ghost is hovering there. She doesn’t seem to be breathing, and you wonder if you need to shake her. 

Quietly, she sits down next to you and folds her hands in her lap. ‘What did he say?’ Voice like falling grey snow.

You tell her. She remains utterly still, but you sense the snow falling inside her, too.

‘He always talked of going to Essos,’ you say. ‘He went on about it all the time, a while back. He was going to go and be a sellsword. He was going to go and fuck loads of girls and live for rich men’s coin. He _said_. And now he’d sooner stay on some stupid little island with a load of monks who don’t _talk_. They don’t drink. They don’t drink _wine_. It’s ridiculous.’ Your head is burning. ‘It’s not like he has to stay with us. But there are people who’d kill him here.’ You feel so angry you’re sure your heart is going to burst out and rampage the hallway massacring people, maybe with your own ribs. Hate hate hate.

You slide your eyes over to your sister. She’s looking older and more graceful than ever, though her eyes look like they’re behind glass. Didn’t she _like_ him? You were sure of it. 

‘Aren’t you angry?’ you say.

‘No,’ she says, her voice like doves’ wings, doves flying through slow-falling snow. ‘I understand.’


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s shortish. But that’s the way it goes. For SophietheGlobetrotter who is embarking on her own journey across the Narrow(ish) Sea. Though she might not thank me for the shout-out. *hiding in a safe place where no one can find me*

**Jaime**

Finally, thank the gods, a boat that has been promised to come has actually arrived. Ser Quincy’s word is as good as his – well, he hasn’t got much else going for him. Podrick has already been down to the harbour, confirmed that we can all get on board. 

Almost all. One horse and one man are staying.

Of course, there are three boats in the harbour today. You know the saying – you wait for a boat and three come along at once. Brienne doesn’t laugh at me when I say that, too busy scanning the horizon for attackers. Perhaps that’s my next mission, really. Making her laugh. I wonder what her eyes look like, then.

The captain’s a whip-thin man with dark eyes and skin the colour of weak black tea.

‘This is us,’ I say. ‘The five of us, and the four horses.’ 

‘With what you’re paying, I’ll take anyone,’ he says, which hardly gets my spirits up. A moral man, then. 

Clegane has used Arya’s old crutch, the one he made, as a stick and walked down with Elder Brother, as much as he’s trying to elbow him off. Arya is limping Stranger down with a saddleful of supplies for us.

I’m not sure what to say to him. He doesn’t look like he has much to say back.

‘Just – well, my thanks,’ I say. ‘At least for that fight in the Vale.’

‘And for the inn,’ he says, looking like he’d rather kiss a pig. 

I really can’t bloody imagine him on the Quiet Isle, living with a cluster of monks, though he says he’ll just be there until he recovers, probably, and then – elsewhere, I suppose, disappearing into the dank smoke of Westeros.

‘I’ll look after them,’ I say. ‘You have my word.’

He spits. ‘Lannister words don’t count for much on this side of the water. Make sure they fucking do over there.’

I nod and hold my hand out. He looks like he wants to spit again, possibly into my face but, with about as much effort as it would take to pull a house out of the ground, he frowns and puts out his own hand.

I leave him to say his farewells to the girls.

**The Hound**

She’s standing there, clutching her cloak to her, the faded purple making her whole head look like it’s on fire. A torch in the dawn.

 _I’m so grateful to you_ , she says. _For looking after Arya_. A few strands of hair are strung across her face by the wind. She pulls them away. _Why did you? Really_?

Can’t look at her. I fix my eyes over her head. _Like I said_ , I say. _For the money_.

A frown, but like I’m a child who’s lost his ball, and which softens. _But you haven’t earnt any_ , she says.

More’s the fucking pity, I think. She’s looking at me, waiting, patient as a septa. A septa, and a maiden, and a calm, white bird. 

Damn it. I can’t ignore her. _My whole life has been looking after someone_ , I say. _Following them around, making sure they don’t get their balls cut off._ I look at her. _I was just making sure she didn’t get her balls cut off_.

There’s a tiny hint of a smile, a dimple. _And now_? she says, bringing an arm around her waist, removing it just as quick. 

_I need to be my own man for a time. Been too long in other people’s shadows_ , I say, and it’s the truest thing I’ve said in a long while. I speak a lot of truths, but this one is from somewhere deeper. 

She nods, small and definite, her eyes full of understanding, but maybe something else. Disappointment, or that might be fancy. It’s my fancy. 

Wolfgirl is yelling something at that boy behind us both. I turn, watch her for a moment, spinning about on her crutch like she’s had it all her life.

 _She likes you_ , Sansa says, the side of her mouth curling up, the swirl of a spoon in cream. 

_Got a bloody funny way of showing it_ , I say right back, before I let myself look at her, speak truer again, though my guts feel as heavy as bloody anything. _There’s others who can watch you better. Both of you_. I squint up to where Lannister and the Tarth woman are, coaxing their horses onto the boat. _Much as I hate to say it, that woman can fight, and fight well. And she’s_ – I try not to sound irritable about it – _better to have a woman knight show her right from wrong. And - he’s changed_. 

She flushes, then, and almost glances round to the boat. _It’s good for him to – be away from everyone_ , she says, and I think, ah, wolfgirl’s told you a thing or two about him, has she? Golden boy suddenly has a spot of tarnish on him.

Her lips come together, carefully, and she swallows. Her bloody gaze. It’s like waking up at dawn after rain. 

_We all have_ , she says. _Changed_ , and I don’t know what in the hells that means. And then she leans up on her toes, puts her hand on my shoulder and I think what the fuck and sort of lean down and she kisses me on my unburnt cheek.

It’s over in a heartbeat, or it would be but for the fact that my heart stopped bloody beating the moment she moved. I look at her, trying to keep my jaw shut. No idea what in the hells to say. Or do. 

_Goodbye, Sandor_ , she says. _I hope to see you again_. She takes another breath as if storing it for the winter and turns at the same time, and there’s a last grip by those bright-sky eyes before she walks up to the ship.

Clouds gather together above the boat, like a curtain around a bed.

I’m trying to pull my insides back to where they should be as they’ve slid all over the place like melting icebergs, when the wolfgirl’s there.

**Arya**

He stands there, looking down on you and looking a bit weird and distant at the same time. He puts his hands on his hips. ‘That boat’s going to fucking go without you,’ he says.

You just stare at him. What is there to say? After all this time, and everything you’ve done together. Starving together, riding in the freezing rain, getting drunk, watching each other piss and shit and throw up. Killing together. Those were the best bits.

Other people would leave a gift, a memento. You remember the coin Jaqen gave you. You draw it out of your belt and hold it up to him. 

‘The fuck’s that?’ he says.

‘ _Valar morghulis_.’

He looks blank. You sigh. ‘It’s a special coin. You can show it to anyone, anyone in Braavos, and say the words, and –‘ His eyebrows are raised. ‘Oh, never mind.’ You tuck it away again, squint up at him. ‘Will you be alright? Really?’

A tiny smile. A proper one. ‘Ay, I’ll be alright.’ He straightens as much as he can, draws his shoulders back, looks down at you. His burns shine in the dawn sun. ‘I’ll finally get some fucking peace.’

‘Don’t get bitten again,’ you say. ‘Or sleep with too many red-headed whores.’

He half-shakes his head, bites his lip in a grin-grimace, looking like he might swipe you. ‘Don’t drink too much wine, you half-pint. And if you’re going to stab anyone –‘ he leans down, puts his hand on your shoulder, and his voice sinks. ‘Stab them properly.’

His hand stays there, warm, and you see something you don’t think you’ve ever quite seen in his eyes before, in the grey – flecks of dark-brown, like a wet autumn – and you see something else. You, reflected. 

He straightens with a wince.

You nod and grin. And then you turn, quickly, and limp up the ship-plank.

 

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so... 
> 
> an epilogue is coming imminently. KISSES *runs away again*


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be clear, though it's an epilogue, it actually follows straight on from the last chapter.

**Sandor**

_It will be good to have you, Brother_ , says the monk as we both face out to sea. 

_I’m not your fucking brother_ , I say. _I don’t want any more fucking brothers_. The boat’s turning, going abreast of the coastline, coming back this way. 

Lannister’s there with the big bitch he seems to have a fancy for, the fuck knows how or why, in the centre of the deck. Her squire’s fussing around her, she’s elbowing him off. And there, up the top, are the Stark girls. The one who drove me mad for a year and the one who drove me mad for a year and more. Arya’s hopping up and down, bloody waving at me, like she’s off to take the sea air, not escaping with her life. 

And Sansa – Sansa, who said my name. My _name_. 

She’s there, a bit further up, like a fucking mermaid on the prow, her hair flying back, standing straight as a sailmast. I think she’s looking ahead, the way the boat is going, but then her body turns, and she’s facing me, skin like marble as the sun hits it, her hand on her chest, as if she’s taking a vow. And then her hand lifts up, her palm in the air, still. 

And I think, _that’s for me_ , and I think that if I ever saw her again, I’d tell her I’d been wrong about what I’d said. Killing being the sweetest thing. 

That there was one thing sweeter.

The monk’s talking about graveyards and plants and year-round harvesting. 

Fuck it. I turn to him. _You know what_? I say. _Think I’ll give the digging a miss_. 

And I leave his side, grab my sword and Stranger’s reins, and limp quickly along the harbour, to find a boat, any cunt pirate boat, to get me after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE (REAL) END (FOR NOW)
> 
> Ohhh, thanks so much to all who have read and to the awesome Commenters of Wonder and Joy.
> 
> [Have a l’il song!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bRAtV-jgoQ) (Made ME laugh anyway…) 
> 
> And another one, suggested by Zip001! [Get Out Of Town as sung by Ella Fitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We26m_fIejE<Get%20Out%20Of%20Town%20by%20Ella%20Fitzgerald</a>%0A%0Axxx)


End file.
